Fish

My dad has been to this wilderness fishing spot called Nootka Lodge and it is in the northern reaches of British Columbia. He always comes back with these really hilarious stories about the crazy transportation he took to get there along with some of the guys he met while staying at this lodge (apparently the majority of the customers are male… who’da though THAT?!)

One thing that made me laugh was when he first announced that he was going away for a week to some place in the middle-of-nowhere to fish.

First, you must understand several things about my father… 1. When he married my mum, he declared that camping wasn’t his thing and that he was more of a “champagne and room service kinda guy”. 2. He is Mr. Technology… loves bigger, better, shinier, faster, talking things. Examples? Cars and televisions. It’s ridiculous. So hearing my dad say that he was going to stay in a place with no internet, no service and hardly any electricity was a laughable matter.

What made us snort into our napkins even more was that he said he was going fishing. My dad and I both love to watch sports; anything from hockey and football (Go STAMPS!!) to… well, nearly everything (though I don’t recommend bowling). He had been a fairly sports orientated individual since he was growing up, but a mixture of severe injuries and not enough time, made most sports a thing of the past. But fishing? That wasn’t a reputable sport! It was a pansy pastime!

But. My dad was going.

Apparently the seas out there in BC are pretty rough… and worse the further you go out. My dad said it was not uncommon for someone to lean out over the side of the dinghy and blow some major chunks, so naturally the urban “seamen” took out various forms of motion-sickness-be-gone drugs.

Looking back on his second trip, I remember him telling us about the 93lb. fish he caught. When they held it up on it’s tail, it’s mouth reached about 6 feet off of the ground… needles to say, my non-fishing father, sitting on a rusty old seat in his slacks with a motion-sickness patch behind his ear and a worn fishing pole in his hand, did not seem like a likely candidate to catch a fish that was 85% of my body weight.

Fishing (although incredibly dull) is a quite complex sport. You sit in a boat for hours on end, holding a stick with either the sun or rain beating down on you (sometimes both! We DO live in Canada after all…) and wait. And wait. And wait.

And wait.

Sometimes you catch something (whether it is a fish or a shoe really depends on the day), sometimes your patience is futile.

The more I thought about this, the more I realized it is like Christianity and outreach. At first, some may think you are crazy, trying something different. You go out of you comfort zone without any connections to your life. It is just you, God and the fish.

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Patience is so huge in fishing and that is one thing I know I need to work much harder to be at an adequate level of achievement. I tend to KNOW God has a plan and that it is better than anything I could think up, but I get so antsy and want things to begin rolling that I take matters into my own hands.

BAD.

Relationships are key to that. I know God has someone out there (maybe nearby; how am I supposed to know?) that will help me see God’s love so profoundly and strongly that I will be a better person. I know that this guy will help me to walk with and worship Jesus more so every day of my life. But, I want to see my fairytale unfold.

BADD.

I have recently just given these feelings over to God. I can’t speed up time, nor do I really want to; because if I were to take a running leap at it and put something where it does not belong, I will be messing up my own plan, not to mention my emotions. It doesn’t matter if there is someone I’m really into because it is God who is writing the script. I only act it out.

I am also coming to the conclusion that the patience I am learning through relationships, I must also put into practice with outreach.

Outreach is about more than just unveiling who God is… outreach is more about just packing a suitcase, getting on a plane and taking a look at where you’ll be staying for the next while. Outreach is unpacking the bag, moving in, picking up that fishing rod, putting that patch on and getting out to the sea.

People all over the place know WHO God is. They may not understand what He has done or why He did it, but even atheists and fall-out Christians know who God is. As followers of Christ, it is our duty to stick by those who come to know Him.

Even if we do outreach and totally get shut down, you are meant to wait it out in that boat with that patch and rod, continuing to bait your line whether you get a nibble or not.

Sometimes you get so far out, you feel like you’re gonna hurl. You are so away from the norm. So far away from your comfort zone.

“Thy rod and thy staff will comfort me.” (Psalm 23:4)

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Soo.. Jesus had a rod? Uhhh of course He did. His first disciples were fishermen (who ((unfortunately)) weren’t the smartest cats in the kennel… so Jesus had to spell it out really clearly) and his words to them were “Come. Follow me. I will make you fishers of people.” (Mark 1:17). Being fishermen, Simon and Andrew knew all about patience. I honestly believe that that was why Jesus took them under His wing. He didn’t take the highly esteemed people who could afford a big scene. Nah, Jesus took the lowly folk… the folk who were looked down on, the folk who’s lives were based on patience…

Really, that’s an accurate statement. Because Simon and Andrew weren’t priests, they worked for a living; because they weren’t intellectually (that’s unfair. Change that word to educationally) privileged, they were fishermen. In Jesus’ eyes (or what I believe He would have thought…) these two had some of the most epic and applicable jobs for what He had planned.

Jesus planned to reel in the fish by the thousands.

He is still doing it today and He is doing it through His followers.

As His people, we need to put on our motion-sickness patches. We need to prepare ourselves for what’s coming. We might get rain, we might get sun. We might get a 93lb. halibut, we might get a water-logged boot.

All-in-all, at the end of the day, all that matters is that we hear “well done, my good and faithful servant” as we stand before the lover of our lives at the end.

~~

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” – Matthew 16:24-25