Wasting Time on Fish

The post-Christmas-Open-House-days still call up a small cold, dark shadow in my mind.

Prolonged months of checklists and tight neck muscles proceeded the event itself and delivered in their wake five weeks of flu and a cold pit of fear over hitherto-unknown financial responsibilities and stressors.

An unaccustomed weight of sadness made getting up in the morning, functioning through the day, and hiding tears from little eyes quick to catch them and ask, “Why are you crying, Mommy?” about all I could put on my checklist for those post-Christmas months.

The Christmas event itself, by God’s grace, had gone well and blessed us with new connections, warm memories, and useful income. The process, however, had some lessons hidden in it that would take some time and decompression to surface.

The main lesson hit me one day as I sat in the castle window reading Luke 5, where Jesus calls His first disciples. Jesus, in Peter’s boat, having just finished preaching to a large crowd, tells Peter to take his boat out into deeper water to catch some fish. Peter, though they had just worked all night without catching anything, obeys. The obedience and trust result in a catch of fish so big it begins to sink both Peter’s boat and his partners’. They drag the fish and boats up to shore, convinced Jesus is who He claims to be, leave the catch of fish behind and follow Jesus to become fishers of men.

That part of the story has always nagged at little at my mind.

How could they just leave the fish? Wouldn’t it be responsible to clean them up and sell them first? Did the fish go to waste? Does anyone go back and get them? The main purpose of the fish was to show Jesus was who He claimed to be, but couldn’t they be put to some practical use as well?

The nag hardly had time to warm up before the silent megaphone of God’s voice interrupted:

You’ve been wasting your time on the fish. 

My thoughts froze in their tracks.

How tragic would it have been for Peter, James, and John to wave Jesus aside: “Not now, Jesus. I don’t have time.  I need to take care of these fish.”

Maybe abundant, bill-paying fish rotting on the shore were there specifically to show how much MORE important the alternative was. Following Jesus can’t take second place to anything.

Not even trying to take care of an unheard of blessing straight from Him.

The scenario sounded familiar.

The lesson would come back again later, even more deeply and specifically, but that day of reading Luke in the castle window was the glimmer of a new path of thought. A glimmer of light in place of darkness, of warmth in place of the chill of the previous months.

Leaving the disciples’ fish behind, for the first time, seemed to make sense, to have a purpose. I could now read the story without the little nag. But, oh, so much more important, I could get up and follow the Giver of All Gifts, knowing the purpose of the pile of fish I left behind was in His hands. He’d not only take care of the fish for me, He knew the purpose for their existence as well.

All I had to do was follow.