In the days after Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared to his disciples at various times. But the time that strikes me most is when he appears at the lake.
The disciples been out all night fishing (John 21), because they didn’t know what else to do. What was going through their minds? Had Jesus really risen? Who broke the bread at their meal days afterward and then disappeared? It seemed unbelievable. They’d just go back to doing what they knew.
They had seen Jesus heal others. They had known him to feed thousands with just a small boy’s lunch, had made the lunch go so far and hadn’t really understood how it happened. And now there was this man on the beach building a fire.
When they came out of the water onto the beach, tired and frustrated, this man had offered them food. He knew they’d be hungry. Then he told them to go out in their boats and throw the nets out one more time.
Now the fishermen might grumble because they’d been out all night and hadn’t caught a thing. They might have thought, We won’t catch any. What does he know? But in this story, we’re not given that kind of detail, only that they indeed go out again and cast the net on the right side of the boat as they are told.
And you know what happened. They caught so many fish they couldn’t haul in the nets.
It seems their eyes were opened suddenly and they recognized this man as Jesus, their friend. The one who had called them “fishers of men” those years ago when they left their nets to follow him. So much had happened since then. What were they to make of all this?
Peter jumped in
the water and went to Jesus. It might seem he had a new understanding about
himself and what Jesus’ call meant. And he still had questions.
What does that mean for us?
Carolyn Wilker
No comments:
Post a Comment