I Smell a Fish Fry!

This season in my life seems radically different than the decades before, yet as I read through scripture, my takeaways remain always staggeringly parallel.

Once again this morning, in this "breakfast moment" with Jesus, as captured in the last chapter of John's Gospel, I hear my own frustration in the words of Peter, when after years of following the Christ, only to see a politicized religion diminish what he at one point would have literally killed for, though as well like we all, had demonstrated his fickle human self by way of denial in a critical moment, he decides to just go back to fishing!

In these verses, after the Rock had seen his dream fall apart, he simply returns to his vocational craft, a fisherman. My craft seems to be around real estate, land assemblage and support of physical development. Yet in all that, an underlying hunger to simultaneously cultivate spiritual community.

Ironically, I was raised among those used often in church planting, congregational gathering and church campus sustainability. For myself, though always attuned to and at times engaged quite deeply within the institutional church, it has seemed always to fall short of what I have experienced as I have attempted to live out my faith equally in the marketplace.

Nevertheless, my life has consistently been shaped and seasoned by way of a disciplined journey in scripture. As well, I have found great joy in my love for creation, creatures big and small, while dabbling among a growing population of entrepreneurs, though never quite sufficiently to boast of any corporate success.

My life has been lived on parallel tracks, though somehow always intertwined. That seems now to be more the normfor many, with the truest of spiritual essence found daily in the marketplace, at a time when the institutional church is sadly struggling.

I must say however, that when nature gets out of source, such as just experienced in Western NC, the Body of Christ does rises to the occasion, at least short term.

Again, these moments seem so similar to what Peter and the disciples experienced in their frustration within the window just after the resurrection and just before their Upper Room moment.

"Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?” “No,” they answered. He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish."

John 21:4-6 NIV

This morning I am again made hopeful, in fact there seems a fresh scent of fish in the air, a breakfast of sorts being prepared.

"Holy people will find God in nature and everywhere else too. Heady people will only find God in books and words, and finally not even there." Richard Rohr