Fishing Moguls

It's been a month since my last post, so I can safely add something here without spoiling my reputation for terribly infrequent posts!

One of my favorite parts of living in Kenya was being close to the sea, something totally new for a drylander like me. There was always so much to learn about the maritime culture - the tides, the boats, the fish, the salt air. I think the locally crafted Kenyan dhow's were my favorite. These little boats, or canoes as you might imagine them, were carved from a tree trunk and fixed with a small sail and maybe an outrigger or two for stability. Early in the morning 2 or 3 guys would make their way to the beach and push their boat out into the aquamarine water for a day's work of fishing. It was always such a calm, serene process that happened every morning just down the hill from our house. No noise, just ancient wooden vessels being pushed into calm water and silently slicing out of the bay into the wide blue yonder of the open ocean.

One morning as I watched the dhow's pull onto the beach after a day of fishing, I watched the men pull their catch from the boat and stretch their nets on the beach to dry. These men who were so poor - barely clothed, no income but the sale of a few dollars of fish, no other way to make an income because fishing for a living is a last resort. Fishermen in Kenya are uneducated, they barely survive, they are at the bottom of the career ladder. Then it hit me - something I'd never really thought about before. These are the exact guys that Jesus called to be apostles, his best friends and disciples, as he began his ministry that rocked the world. Peter and Andrew, James and John - they weren't the fishing moguls I'd always imagined them to be. They didn't have a huge boat with a rowing crew. They weren't professionals, just local guys trying to scrape a living from their canoe. You know that story when they caught 132 fish and it swamped the boat? I always thought those must have been big fish! That wasn't it at all - the boat was just tiny!

Jesus picked the local guys, the ones at the bottom of the career ladder so to speak. He picked simple guys - guys with little formal education, guys that maybe tried to make it in rabbinic school but failed because they just didn't quite have what it took, guys that knew hard work and weren't afraid of it. Why? Why didn't Jesus pick the educated, or religious, or upity? Why were these guys willing to drop their nets and follow him? Why did he pick them?

And what about me? I don't really fit the mold that Jesus picked from. I'm not at the bottom of society - I have money, I have an education, I've grown up in the church. I don't have a shady career like Matthew, I'm not a revolutionary like Simon the Zealot, I'm pretty plain. Does he pick people like me? Does he pick people like you?

I'm convinced that he does! Jesus picked normal folks from all walks of life to be men and women that abandon everything to follow him. Can Jesus pick a wine-tapper who spends his time atop palm trees collecting the ready-made brew for his buddies? Sure! Can Jesus pick the American Mom who spend her time wrestling kids and running errands? Sure! No matter where we come from, who we are, what our background is - Jesus has picked us to join his team. What a great privilege to know that even in spite of our inadequacies, He asks us to join his mission in the world and make this place better for everyone. That is what fishing for men, I think, is all about.