Cybercolumn for 2/9/04 by John Duncan: God & fishermen_20904

Posted: 2/10/04

CYBERCOLUMN:
God & fishermen

By John Duncan

I’m sitting here under the old oak tree, wondering about fishing. Christ loved fishermen.

Last fall, I went fishing in Central Texas on a private pond. The heat of the fall reigned over me and the other fishermen. We ate peanut butter crackers and drank bottled water chilled over ice. The teacher, knowing I seldom fished, instructed me on the ways of baiting the fish and setting the hook.

My teacher placed a rubber worm with glitter on the j-shaped hook and told me to cast my hook upon the waters. The old preacher from Ecclesiastes once wisely instructed his students, “Cast your bread upon the waters and after many days it will come back.” I was casting my hook on the waters in hopes of a fish coming back.

I threw out a fishing line while the sun beat upon my forehead. “Set the hook,” kept scrolling through my mind like a message at the bottom of a television screen.

I carefully viewed the surrounding scenery—a rock ledge, a floating tire, seaweed, an upside-down aluminum boat on the sandy shore, a tree waving in the light breeze, a cooler and net in the boat, and fish swimming at the surface of the clear water.

Then it happened. A nibble on the hook sent the line off in a direction opposite the boat.

“Set the hook,” scrolled through my brain again.

I jerked the fishing pole—and low and behold, I caught a fish—a gulping fish with jagged teeth and scales and razor-blade fins and speckled skin and a j-shaped hook in the top of his mouth.

My fishing escapade set me to wondering about Jesus’ love for fishermen. He called Peter, Andrew, James and John from their fishing nets. They lived as the sons of Zebedee, fishermen by trade, passionate about gulping fish with jagged teeth and scales and razor-blade fins and speckled skin with meat inside. “Follow me,” Jesus invited.

“And they immediately left the ship and their father and followed him” (Matthew 4:22). As they followed Jesus, they became sons of God and so-called sons of thunder. Their faith rattled the earth.

We strung a heavy load of fish that day on the pond. I gloried in the prize of a catch and took digital pictures to prove it. I smelled like fish for the rest of the day.

I find myself thinking about Jesus and the fishermen. He sets the hook in the heart. He glories in fishermen like a prize. He receives them just as they are—stinky fish smell and all. He bids them, “Come, follow me!”

And in the simplicity of his bidding, many follow. After all, the simplicity of following Jesus brings joy like catching a string of fish.

As Henri Nouwen says, “The loud, boisterous noises of the world make us deaf to the soft, gentle and loving voice of God.”

And so here I am under the old oak tree, wondering. On a pond in Central Texas while setting a hook and catching a fish, I blocked the noise of the world out to be reminded of the soft, gentle, and loving voice of God: “Come, follow me!” Will you?

John Duncan is pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas, and the writer of numerous articles in various journals and magazines