A Fish Story.

Image © by Brian E. Faulkner

In the short interval between Christ’s resurrection and ascension, after Jesus had appeared to the disciples several times (including the memorable encounter with doubting Thomas), a man was seen on the beach as Simon, Peter, Thomas and their companions fished on the lake perhaps a hundred yards distant. It was daybreak, and they had been working all night. The man shouted out from shore, asking whether they had caught any fish. 

​They hadn’t.
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“Cast your net on the right side of the boat,” he called out, “and you will find some.” 
 
No doubt they were tired and frustrated, so it’s easy to imagine their reaction.  But they cast their nets anyway.  And caught more fish than the net was supposed to hold.
 
Realization struck like a thunderclap. 
 
“It is the Lord!” John shouted.  When Simon Peter heard that, he sprang into the sea and struck out for the beach, the others following in the boat, dragging the unbroken, fish-laden net behind them. 
 
When they got to shore, a fire had been started with bread and fish on the coals.  Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you just caught; come and have breakfast.”  They accepted his invitation and, giving thanks, quietly acknowledged their Lord’s resurrection from the dead, the same Lord they had thought lost just days before.  
 
The experience likely reminded the disciples of another fish “happening.”  Early in his public ministry, Jesus had borrowed a boat one morning to stand away from the land and speak to a crowd more effectively.  The boat belonged to Simon, who had been on the lakeshore with other fishermen washing their nets following a night during which they had caught no fish.  When Jesus finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”
 
It was an odd time of day to be fishing and they must have been tired after a fruitless night, but Simon was aware of the miracles the “Master” had been performing.  So he let down his nets in obedience.  “And when they had done this, they enclosed a great shoal of fish; and as their nets were breaking, they beckoned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them.  And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.”
 
This event initiated the discipleship of Simon, James, and John.  At Jesus’ invitation, they beached their boats, left their old lives behind (presumably including the fish) and followed him.  They were to become fishers of men.
 
In the space of a few short weeks, the three were transformed, their lives changed irrevocably.  And yet, as Scripture reveals time and again, they remained shot through with doubts and uncertainties -- so much so that a major lesson yet awaited Peter following the fishing episode recounted in John 21:1-14, above.  
 
Have you been fishing in this life, perhaps for a very long time, and have no real results to show for it? Have you let down your nets time and again only to have them come back empty?  It’s easy to give up, to quit.  But that’s not what our Savior and Lord asks of us.
 
As Savior, he has assured our salvation and set us up for the next step in our pilgrimage: sanctification, the process by which we gradually are made more like Jesus than ourselves … more Holy, more open to his lead.  As Lord of our life, Jesus asks us to trust him in this, just as He trusted the Father for his steps on Earth.  By way of the Holy Spirit’s prompting, Christ asks us to let our nets down at a place and time of his choosing, not our own. 
 
Because that’s where the fish are.   The ones you’ve been looking for all your life, the ones that will make you shout with thankfulness and joy, “It is the Lord!”

(written 4-25-16)

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