There are many things that weigh upon the heart—cares about the future, fears of loss, burdens that seem too great to bear. Yet the command is not to carry them more carefully, but to cast them. For what is “your care,” except that by which you attempt to provide for yourself apart from God? To cast it upon Him is to relinquish that anxious self-reliance and to entrust all things to His governance. He who made you is more capable of sustaining you than you are of sustaining yourself.

For the soul is worn down not so much by its labors, as by the belief that everything depends upon it. Augustine points out that we are troubled because we take upon ourselves what belongs to God. We seek to control what is uncertain, and we are shaken because we cannot. But when the care is cast upon the Lord, the burden is not destroyed—it is transferred. He bears what you cannot, and in that exchange the soul finds rest. Thus it is not freedom from responsibility that is promised, but freedom from the weight that crushes.

“He shall sustain you.” Not remove every trial, nor immediately change your circumstances, but uphold you within them. The promise is not that the path will be easy, but that you will not fall. For God does not abandon those who trust in Him. When the soul ceases to cling to its own strength and rests instead in His, it discovers a deeper stability—one that does not depend on outward conditions, but on the constancy of the One who carries it.

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Source: St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, Psalm 54 (NPNF Series 1, Vol. 8).