The question in my devotion on Luke 5:1-11 asked, “What do you think is the message of the miracle to Simon Peter when he ponders over this experience?”
He chose me. He got onto MY boat. He trapped me into listening to his teaching and boy was my heart warmed as he taught me about God in a way that none of the religious teachers did. They only know how to fear God. To be honest, I don’t want to be involved in religious matters. So why did I allow Jesus into my boat? Curious, but also there is a way about him that does not make things to be about him. I don’t know how to say it well. The fact that he got onto my wet boat, sat down without much ceremony. He smiled his thanks but left me on my own to focus on teaching the crowd.
Man, can he teach! True, I don’t half understand what he really means but I don’t need anyone to explain that he was teaching that God actually cares for us small people. He wasn’t going on about religious arguments, and this law or that law. No, he never implied that I can just ignore the law; just that it is not what God is really focused on. It’s like God is bigger than the law. I cannot explain it but it made me think, if only God were as this man says he is, I could really relate and respond.
Haha, I love the way he showed the religious teachers up for their hypocrisy; their showy robes, their tokens of piety, their pretense of humility and the thing I hate the most: the way they look down on us commoners who cannot keep up with all the requirements that they have established. Man, how I hate religion.
But this man, he not only made a lot of sense, but he makes me want to get near to God and to know him. It makes no sense, and is even a little frightening; I am a common fisherman. But this man, he is here in my workplace, in my boat, sitting on my bench, smelling the sweat off my back.
“Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” I was showing off, you know. Showing him up. What does he know? He didn’t even know that we have worked this area all night and caught nothing.
Instead I was shown up for my stupid blindness. I did not know who was in my boat. My heart was responding to him, warming to the person he is showing me, both himself and the God he is teaching me about; my mind was just slow. And arrogant.
Don’t ask about what happened next. It is all a blur. The moment I felt the weight on the nets as I pulled I knew: I’m dead. I was rude and arrogant towards this man of God. I was afraid; it’s the only way I knew how to respond to God. “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” What else could I do but to throw myself at his mercy.
His next words were amazing. “Don’t be afraid.” And it was said gently, telling me to trust that he has good intentions towards me. You know, ever since then, and yes, you don’t have to tell me how often I have blabbed before I could think, but ever since then I am never afraid of him? I am never afraid that he will have bad intentions towards me. I will say the wrong thing, but I will say the wrong thing in his presence and not behind his back. Every time, these words are burned into my heart: Don’t be afraid.
“From now on you will fish for people.” I wish I can tell you that I knew what that meant. But I knew, we knew, it was something wonderful. But even more than that, it was to do what HE wants me, us, to do. You tell me: the nets, the boat, the fish, the sea, for the rest of our lives, or to walk and work with this man of God?
He got into my boat that fateful morning but before the day ended all of us got onto his.
Thanks for the insightful monologue by Simon Peter just as you imagined it. By sheer reading, I vicariously lived his experience with Jesus in the boat. May we all catch the right fish in Jesus’ boat!