Learning to Fish

I just read a daily devotion that used this line, "Jesus taught us to fish from the other side of the boat." It is sticking to my mind like that stretchy, sticky stuff they use on labels for things now a days. The devotion was talking about when Jesus appeared to the disciples after his resurrection. They hadn't caught anything all night, but he tells them to fish from the other side of the boat and they caught so much, it was hard to haul it in.

Fishing from the other side of the boat...it seems like a good line. Except it has scary overtones. It means doing something we have done a million times, but in a different way. It means sharing the peace with someone we'd rather not and saying, "Peace be with you," and REALLY meaning it. It means really asking for forgiveness when we do so in prayer without thinking about what the rest of the day brings. It may mean sitting in a different pew for a change.

I think what the author of the devotion touched on (and why it still sticks with me) is that it's really easy to always fish from the same side of the boat. It's easy to do the same thing, the same way in the same place all the time. There is a comfort in sameness. But the Lord asks us to do things a little differently now that Easter has arrived. We are called to remember that we are a new creation in that rebirth and new creations don't always do the same thing the same way.

How can we fish from the other side of the boat this week? What can we do that although it is the same, is also new and different? More in line with what our lives can be about as Christians? How can we come away from the fishing trip with more in our nets than we ever had before? I'm still working on that. I hope you will too!