I was pretty proud of myself—I’d remembered to bring a back-up fishing pole, my tackle box, and to buy a fishing license and some nightcrawlers. Now, I did forget the bobbers-- so Eli just cast & dragged the worm across the bottom. Or, as Jeremy preferred, just drop the line at the end of the pole, and try to yank the fish in as they nibbled!
Unfortunately, neither technique netted any fish for us. What they did net was weeds—or underwater crabgrass (no marine biologist am I, clearly).
Which would have been okay, because as a dad I know all the traditional ‘no-fish-today’ excuses: it’s the wrong time of day, it’s just a bad spot, the moon’s in the wrong place, or, the fish just aren’t biting. Any of these would have worked, and as long as our trip home passed by a McDonalds for French Fries on the way home, it would’ve been deemed a success…
Except for the dad 20 feet over.
At first I thought he’d be a kindred spirit: his one son wasn’t paying attention, and his other son was complaining. In other words, I felt right at home! But then I heard the words every frustrated fisher-dad hates to hear from up the shoreline: “Golly, we got another one!” Seriously, he and his kids must have caught half-a-dozen fish just in the half hour we were sitting!
I was hoping Jeremy wouldn’t notice…but then he said, half-enviously, half-dejectedly, “Sounds like they’re having better luck.” Or, as I mumbled quietly to myself, “Sounds like they have a smarter dad…”
Comparing ourselves to others, comparing our skills to others, or comparing the size of our catch to our neighbor’s—that’s all part of the ‘little life’ that the Enemy tempts us to settle for. But that’s not the kind of abundant life that Jesus promises; Jesus offers us a life that’s not measured in how much we catch, but by what we’re fishing for, and whose boat we’re fishing out of.
If the economic contractions of the past two years have left your “boat” a bit rusty and peeling, or left your net feeling a little less full than your neighbor’s, please remember—like I was forced to last week—that life’s really not a fishcount. Abundant life with Jesus isn’t an accounting, but an adventure—and the fishcount business is what we have to leave behind in order to really live it!
I am the Gate. Anyone who goes through me will be cared for—will freely go in and out, and find pasture. A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of. John 10:9-10 Message
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