Parking Spaces

having cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares about you. 1 Peter 5:7 NASB

Anxiety – Many, many years ago, when I was still a teenager, I joined a Bible study group with my friends.  It was actually a pivotal point in my life.  It introduced me to people who seriously examined the text and tried to practice what they read.  Of course, looking back on those sessions now I realize that the interpretative scheme employed was thoroughly Christian Pentecostal, but at the time it took me out of my Sunday School world and into a world where believing was a rational enterprise.  By the time I finished high school, I already had the complete works of Berkouwer, Calvin’s theological tomes, Luther’s commentary on Romans, and, of course, the works of Charles Finney, not the usual kind of reading for most eighteen-year-olds.  Perhaps I was more naïve about faith then, but I also found solace and comfort in verses that today are fodder for lexical investigation.

However, one incident started my cascade into questioning, a cascade that more than fifty years later leaves me with much more difficult problems of faith.  That incident was about a parking space.  Interpreting 1 Peter 5:7 as literally true, my friends faithfully believed that prayer was the instantaneous solution of all of life’s difficulties.  We were going together to some event.  I don’t remember what it was, but I do remember that we were late and when we arrived there were no parking spaces in the area.  We drove through the lot once, finding nothing.  Then one of the group announced, “God knows we need a place to park.  Let’s pray, believing He will provide, and then drive around again.”  Of course, who could resist such a solution?  We prayed, and went back to the parking lot.  Sure enough, just as we arrived right in front of the building, a car pulled out of the space and we had an answer to prayer.  God cares about parking spaces.  Hallelujah!  Everyone rejoiced.  1 Peter 5:7 was absolutely true.

But that got me thinking.  If God cares about parking spaces, why didn’t He care about the Holocaust?  Why didn’t He do something about the Kennedy assassination?  Why does He let little children starve to death in Africa?  If parking lot spaces are examples of His compassion, but Holocaust victims aren’t, what kind of a God is He?  I’m afraid that this naïve prayer turned me toward the dark side.  I couldn’t understand a God who was so indifferent to massive evil and yet answered prayers about completely trivial matters.  The faith of all my friends was confirmed.  Mine went off the rails.  I’ve been trying to recover that naivete ever since.

What does Peter really mean in light of our propensity to want to believe God will act on our behalf for every little thing?  Perhaps we need some cultural and linguistic context.  First we should note Peter’s audience.  Men and women of the Roman Empire feeling the desperation of persecution, the expulsion from their familial religious and civic cultures, dealing with the tension of a new community—these are the people Peter wants to assure.  They weren’t concerned about parking spaces.  They were concerned about torture and execution.  In that environment, Peter offers comfort and exhortation.  His comfort is that God cares.

What does He care about?  “All your anxiety.”  And what is that?  The Greek is mérimna, a word that means something like “concern.”  Notice Bultmann’s elaboration: “The NT realizes that life is swayed by care. Concern is unavoidable but it is given a new orientation. Liberation from it comes as one casts it upon God, not because God grants every wish, but because prayer grants freedom from care.”^[1]  In other words, prayer is not a hot line to Heaven.  It is a stress-reliever.  You pray.  You leave it to God.  He answers if He wants to.  That’s enough.  As the rabbis were fond of noting: “Lord, make my heart so malleable that I can accept whatever You decide.”

Finally, it’s worth noting that this Greek verse draws upon Psalm 55:22, “Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you.”  The Hebrew word for “burden” is yĕhāb, meaning “lot,” exactly as the verse suggests with imagery from the ancient world.  Cast a lot.  Accept the result.

yĕhāb in Ps 55:22 [H 23]) is translated “burden” (KJV, ASV, RSV) with the additional marginal note “what he has given you” (RSV taking the word as a perfect of the verb). Instructive is the LXX merimna “care, anxiety, burden” in this passage, used four times for dĕʾāgâ “anxious care.” In Sir 34:1 and 42:9 it is linked with sleeplessness. The thought then would be God’s providence, whether it forbodes evil or good, should not induce fear or brooding anxiety, but contrariwise should cause one to turn in quiet confidence to the Lord who gives a new perspective on life. God then does not guarantee our desire, but rather he is the one who knows our needs better than we ourselves.^[2]

Does God care about parking spaces?  Yes, I suppose He does, but what really happens when I pray about a parking space is that I learn to accept, not that I expect God to do something about it.  I still have considerable trouble about the Holocaust, about the kids under the bridge, about all the massive evil in the world—all of which seems so incompatible with a benevolent God—but I hope my heart is malleable.  Frankly, that’s about all I can hope for.  Then I go about doing what I can and leave the sleepless nights to God.

“Rabbi Ami, ‘a man’s prayer is answered only if he stakes his life on it.’”[3]  Do parking spaces qualify?

Topical Index: care, concern, anxiety, prayer, mérimna, yĕhāb, Psalm 55:22, 1 Peter 5:7

^[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 584). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.

^[2] Gilchrist, P. R. (1999). 849 יָהַב. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 368). Chicago: Moody Press.

[3] Abraham Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, p. 71.