Today has been hard.
This morning I attended the church I am interning at and as I was sitting in the main worship service I finally felt at home in this church. This is a big deal because I have been attending this church since last November and it is the only church I have attended outside of my home church growing up and I expected to feel 'at home' here way before now. And today I did and it was hard.
Now, that wouldn't be something that is normally hard but as I look forward to the fact that I am leaving in January I am feeling somewhat anxious about leaving everyone and everything here. I feel so blessed by the community at my school and now at church and I am struggling with the concept of leaving it all.
But even now as I write this I feel the Lord reminding me of the message that the High School Pastor taught in our High School service. He taught on Luke 5:1-11 where Jesus is teaching a crowd from Simon's boat. As I look at the verses I see that Simon and the other fishermen were minding their own business living life according to their fathers' profession when all of sudden this teacher comes up to them and first, he asks to teach from their boat and then secondly, after he finishes he tells them how and where to fish. I mean, what the heck? If I were doing my job and minding my own business when someone came up and asked to use my boat to teach I can see myself allowing it, but then after he is done teaching if he were to tell me how to do my job I would be like, 'excuse me? who are you?'
And of course that is what Simon does, he answers, "Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!" Which is what I would have said, but then he adds, "But at your word I will let down the nets."
So they let down their nets and everyone was astonished at the overwhelming amount of fish that they caught. There were so many that their nets started breaking! Jesus provides, always. You would think that this would be enough to show that he was someone different, I mean he is teaching a new way but now he has the action to prove he is different. He has shown himself trustworthy, so now he tests the waters even more.
After this Jesus takes it one step further and says to them, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men." And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.
Jesus does this a lot. He knows that we fear, so he starts gently by telling us, do not be afraid. Then he asks us to follow him and leave everything.
Alright Jesus, you tell me not to be afraid so I will seek to trust you with this. He will be faithful and help me leave everything and everyone in January. There is no need to fear.
