It is rare that I find an author that grabs my attention from the very first sentence, and keeps my attention through 2 other books of his. Donald Miller has done this to me, and I must say that it has been an incredible journey.
I am currently reading “Searching For God Knows What”–the third book of his that I have read in a month.
Last night, I read part of chapter nine, which is titled “Jesus.” He goes through several of the characteristics of Jesus that never really struck him until he read through the gospels 10 times in a row.
Here’s the passage that made me put the book down because I had to think about it:
“In the last chapter of his gospel, John shows the unending nature of Christ’s patience with people. Jesus has risen from the dead and already revealed Himself to the disciples, and yet some of them, including Peter, have gone fishing. Jesus searches out these guys and finds them fishing. They don’t recognize Him on the distant shore, and so the Lord calls to them and asks if they have had any success fishing. “No,” they reply, and so Christ tells them to cast their net on the other side of the boat. The disciples do this and find so many fish they can’t pull the net into the boat (See John 21:1-6). This is the same miracle Christ performed when He first met Peter, asking him to follow Him, telling Peter He would make him a fisher of men (see Matthew 4:18-19).
“My friend David observes a few interesting dynamics in this scene. The first idea is that Peter had spent the last three years traveling with Christ, watching miracles be performed, listening to Jesus’ proclamations about His Godhead, and noting the many prophecies that were being fulfilled daily, and yet after all of this, he is back where Jesus had found him: fishing. The second observation is the number of times John mentions the actual presence of fish. John says they were fishing, John gives the exact number of fish they caught, John says the fish were dragged to the shore where they were sitting, John says Christ made a fire and cooked them breakfast, leading us to assume they were eating fish (See John 21:1-13).
“John then goes into detail about a conversation Jesus had with Peter. In the conversation, Jesus says to Peter, “Do you love me more than these?” (21:15 NKJV). David wonders if Christ is talking not about the other disciples, as I first thought when I read the text, but rather about the fish. After all, John isn’t a writer who wastes words, and he did bring up the fish several times, hardly mentioning the other disciples…”
Wow…when I read that it really struck me…these men had been impacted by Jesus Himself…He came back from the dead, and they knew He was alive…yet they went back to what they knew, what was comfortable–fishing…their old life…
How often am I tempted to just do what is “comfortable” or what is easy? How often do I have an incredible experience with God, and then soon after act like it never happened? How often do I continue doing things the way that they’ve always been done, or how often do I go along with “religion” or “party lines” rather than doing what I know in my heart would be better?
Jesus is incredibly patient…and while I have always “known” that, it hit me in a new way last night. Lots of things are changing inside of me, and I’m just beginning to be able to put words to these struggles and revelations…Jesus is patient with us as we begin to finally figure things out…and I am so grateful!
God is good!
Even So, Joy 