"Cast your cares on God; that anchor holds"
About this Quote
An anchor is a quiet piece of technology: it doesn’t remove the storm, it makes surviving it possible. Frank Moore Colby, an educator and public intellectual of the early 20th century, chooses that image on purpose. “Cast your cares on God” isn’t pitched as a magical eraser of anxiety; it’s a disciplined act of transfer, a deliberate unloading of psychic cargo so you can stay oriented when circumstances won’t cooperate.
The line borrows the cadence of biblical counsel (especially 1 Peter 5:7) but trims it into a maxim that fits modern life: short, memorizable, portable. Colby’s intent feels pedagogical as much as devotional. He’s offering a mental habit, the way a teacher offers a rule-of-thumb that keeps students from spiraling: you don’t have to solve the whole ocean; you need something that holds.
The subtext is both comforting and corrective. Comforting because it treats worry as weight, not moral failure. Corrective because it implies your “cares” are not meant to be carried alone, and that relentless self-reliance is a kind of vanity. The promise is modest but potent: not that you won’t drift, but that you won’t be lost.
Context matters: Colby wrote in an era of rapid industrial change and social churn, when faith-language often functioned as emotional infrastructure. The phrase works because it meets modern restlessness with an old metaphor that still reads clean: stability isn’t a feeling, it’s a tether.
The line borrows the cadence of biblical counsel (especially 1 Peter 5:7) but trims it into a maxim that fits modern life: short, memorizable, portable. Colby’s intent feels pedagogical as much as devotional. He’s offering a mental habit, the way a teacher offers a rule-of-thumb that keeps students from spiraling: you don’t have to solve the whole ocean; you need something that holds.
The subtext is both comforting and corrective. Comforting because it treats worry as weight, not moral failure. Corrective because it implies your “cares” are not meant to be carried alone, and that relentless self-reliance is a kind of vanity. The promise is modest but potent: not that you won’t drift, but that you won’t be lost.
Context matters: Colby wrote in an era of rapid industrial change and social churn, when faith-language often functioned as emotional infrastructure. The phrase works because it meets modern restlessness with an old metaphor that still reads clean: stability isn’t a feeling, it’s a tether.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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