Faithful Fisherman

We’re staring at empty nets after a long night of fruitless fishing.  This Pandemic is really taking it out of us.  We are weeping for lost loved ones.  We are struggling against uncertainty and confusion, helpless to figure out what to do next.  We are watching our churches, our businesses, our families, or our communities flounder.  We’re scared to death of the gathering forces of destruction in our nation and in the world and horrified to see how quickly and profoundly climate change has affected the globe.  Oh, are our nets ever empty!
And into the middle of our exhaustion and our gloom, here comes that guy, that Christ – that uncomfortable splinter of holy perspective we have never been able to dig out of our hearts.  “Do it again,” he says.  “This time go out into the deep water.  Cast your nets there.  Go deeper.  Do it again.  Do what you are good at, what calls you.  Yes, cast out your nets.  Again.”

Don’t you have to struggle, I mean, struggle hard, not to lean slowly forward and throw up on his sandals?  Day has never been a good time to fish.  Common sense and our utter, bone deep weariness rise up against him.  This time we won’t go.  This time our beds call us home.  Somebody else, somebody younger and with better ideas will take our boats and renovate them, will try new things.  Surely we can be allowed to retire?

You know how the old saying goes: insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  But he is calling us, and so we go.  We do it, sure we do.  We take the groaning boats out into the deep water, leaving behind the shore with its promise of eventual rest.  We go deep, because he is the one who has commanded us to do so.  We try not to think about it too much.   We just go because he has said to go, and we throw our nets into the sea one more time.

And now let us open our eyes.  It is time to slip into the big Self perspective.  We are not alone, we are not lost, and we are overwhelmed with abundance.  Abundance comes.  He takes our breath completely away.  We’re shoved out of the attitude of thinking we know how it all will go.  We are not in charge – not even close.

All we can think about is how sinful we are, and how undeserving.  But Christ’s absurd abundance smacks even those thoughts to the ground.  He has a job for us.  There is no getting around it.

Faithful fisherman, standing thigh deep in fish, your boat slowly sinking – to what are you called today?  What is the “everything” you will leave behind to follow the holy splinter, the Christ in your heart?  How will you let go of your mind’s limited perspective on what is possible and what can happen to let God guide your next steps?  You don’t have to see far ahead.  All you need to do is listen well and follow.

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