It was the first
quarter of my freshmen year at Auburn. I had been forced to take Government and
Economics. You know, it was one of those required classes that everyone loves
to hate. As an aspiring Language Arts teacher, this class was the furthest
thing from my wheelhouse, and it showed through the grades I was receiving on
the tests. See, I could handle the government piece, after all that part
intrigued me, but economics?! Take me back to the liberal arts side of campus!
My main nemesis
in this class was supply and demand. It seemed all my professor wanted to teach
and talk about was supply and demand. Mind you, I understood the concept, but
when it came to charting it I was clueless. And it was on every test. As a
result and with great thanksgiving for the government portion of the class, my
grade was a pretty solid C. As a perfectionist and one who prided herself on
good grades, this was particularly stressful for me. I just couldn’t get it and
had resigned myself to my first C ever.
Then, it
happened, the day before the final my professor announced to the class that if
what we made on our final was better than the average of all of our other test
scores, that would be our grade for the course. Oh man, I was so excited and
determined that I would not let supply and demand get the best of me.
That evening, I
holed up in my room and I studied, and studied, and studied. This was my first
semester of college and I was too timid and probably too prideful to ask for
help. I didn’t know a lot of people and it may just have been too hard to
acknowledge that something had not come to me on my own. So, here I sat with
this potential to make it all okay and unable to do it by myself.
I had one of those
moments of pure frustration. I stopped studying. I bowed my head and asked God
to give me eyes to see and a mind to understand this material. “Please just
help me to know how to chart this stuff.” I opened my eyes, looked at the
graphs, and boom – I understood how it worked. I literally saw it with fresh
eyes. It was a straight “Aha” moment from God.
I went in the
next day, took the test and aced it. I walked away from that class with an A.
Can you believe that? It was one of the first times in my academic career that
I felt a bit like a poser – I knew that grade did not reflect the struggle.
It’s like when the score of the football game in no way shows the reality of
how that thing played out.
Beyond that, it
was one of the first experiences in my life where I can recall truly calling
out to God for help and earnestly believing I couldn’t do it on my own. God
heard my cry, and through the work of a gracious professor, things were made
right.
Side note: If you
wondering when I made my first C, it was that same semester in Geology. There
was no hope there. Rocks and minerals, no thank you. Again, take me back to the
liberal arts side of campus!
I love to share
this story because it is a testimony from my life about the importance of never
giving up and tenacity. It is a great example of grace and how it is always
reaching into our lives and often in the most unlikely of places. It is an
account of how God works in the small, ordinary moments of life to give us a
fresh understanding of our faith.
Our Gospel for
today lets us in on a similar story with some of the disciples. Simon Peter,
James and John had been fishing for the better part of the day with no luck.
They had come in, washed their nets and pretty much resigned themselves to it
being one of those days.
Then Jesus shows
up. He asks Simon to take his boat back out into the water where he teaches for
a bit. Then, he tells Simon to drop his net on one side of the boat to catch
some fish.
Now, sometimes we
have to read between the lines of Scripture for the natural human response in
this story. It is completely possible that Simon was unbothered by this request, acknowledged
calmly to Jesus that he hadn’t caught any fish using that technique all day,
and obeyed. But I think it was probably a little more complicated than that.
I do not fish on
a regular basis, and I have never fished with a net like Simon. But I have
spent the day out in the hot sun working and brought everything back to the
house, cleaned it up and been ready to call it a day before. I know that I
would have been a bit frustrated and cranky about Jesus asking me to go back
out, listen to some teaching and then bring out the nets that I had already
washed and put away to try the same thing I’ve been doing all day over again.
Put yourselves
there in that moment. What would have been your response?
I believe Simon
looks at Jesus and wants to say something like, “You’ve gotta be joking,
right?” Instead, he says “You know we’ve been doing that all day, but if you
say so!” He casts the net and there are so many fish that the nets are
compromised and they have to call in help from other boats to get them all in.
Then, the boats began to sink because there were so many fish in them.
Simon’s response
is curious. He is filled with shame and disappointment at a time that seems
like it should be filled with joy and awe. He declares himself sinful -
probably because he knows all the attitude he was giving prior to this
miraculous outpouring of fish. But maybe, because he feels his lack of faith
and seeking help in this situation in a very real way. Jesus’ response is full
of grace and a call to walk deeper with Him.
For Jesus, and
Simon, James and John, this moment was about more than catching fish. Jesus met
these men in their everyday lives, showed them He was trustworthy, and then
called them deeper. He literally tells them to cast the net in the deep waters.
The Scripture tells us this moment was so transformative for them that they
left everything, followed Jesus, and turned their attention to a new calling to
fish for people.
Perhaps we all
can speak to a moment or several that are the tipping point for us in our faith
journey. A small, somewhat ordinary way that God showed up in our lives when we
least expected it and took us on a path of transformation.
You see that
Economics class was for me a way of God showing me how to trust, to be
empowered, to be willing to try new and scary things. It was a lesson for me in
what to do when things were hard, and it showed me that I had way more tenacity
than I thought. Although it seems kind of silly and insignificant in the grand
scheme of things, that experience and my Freshmen year set off a chain reaction
of other moments of transformation for me.
It led to a
decision to leave home and work at a summer camp four hours away where I knew
absolutely no one - a big deal for a small town girl who is secretly very much
an introvert. That summer was life-changing and led me to my campus ministry
which ultimately led me to my husband and the place I found my calling into
ministry.
My campus ministry called me deeper into seminary
at Duke University – a place that seemed beyond anything that I could ever be
worthy of – which in turn called me deeper into serving churches, to my family
and children, to adoption and foster care, to most recently moving across the
state with three children knowing a handful of people, to finding and settling
into a new home.
In all those
major life moments and a lot of little things in between, God has continued to
call me deeper. I believe it only takes one seemingly insignificant moment,
like the amount of fish you catch or the grade you make in the class, where God
shows up to transform us for a lifetime and call us deeper into a life of faith
with God.
It only takes a
willingness to cry out for help or maybe receive it begrudgingly at first to
set it all in motion.
My hunch is that
many of you have a story of something that called you deeper into your faith
journey. I encourage you to think about it and possibly share it with someone
this week. It may be small and ordinary, but you know it was quite significant and
changed your life forever. The Scriptures are filled with accounts of everyday
life being interrupted by the presence of God – going for a walk, fishing,
drawing water from the well, and even collecting taxes.
The invitation
and call to something deeper with God is always there for each of us. It’s just
a question of whether we are willing to cast the net into the deep waters and
see what will happen.
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