Coming up Short

I shared with one of my friends in Sunday School that while I have not kept a written record of every fishing trip I’ve ever been on, I think I may have set a personal record with my fishing excursion Saturday morning. Now this record isn’t one that I would like to boast over, but it is a reality nonetheless. Once the boat was safely back on the trailer, all the gear securely stored away, and my feet rescued from a bobbing boat and safely back on solid ground, it dawned on me that I might have just accomplished a first…

With the lake in the rear-view mirror and the truck pointed towards home, my brain began searching through the card catalog and hard drive of my fishing endeavors of days gone by. As best as my search through the storage of my mind could conclude, I had just gone on two consecutive fishing trips without catching a single fish. Now don’t get me wrong – I have been on plenty of consecutive trips where the catch was less than stellar, yielding only one or two of the scaly scalawags, but never the likes of what I’ve achieved the last two Saturdays. What can I say? I came up short. It goes that way sometimes doesn’t it?

As I write these words, I am reminded of a wooden placard that hung in my Dad’s bedroom when I was a kid. Painted on it were the words, “If at first you don’t succeed, you’re running about average!” And as hard a pill as that reality is to swallow, it is the cold, hard truth. It’s not that I didn’t try…I fished every location with every technique that I had confidence in and even some that I didn’t, and still the only thing caught two weeks in a row was a slight sunburn.  I felt like Peter, the professional fisherman, must have felt when “They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.” (John 21:3). There are those times when we don’t catch anything…we don’t win the game…we fail to convince someone to change their ways…we don’t reach the goal we desire…etc. The beauty of these scenarios is this: FAILURE IS NOT FINAL! Following that fruitless night of fishing, Jesus told Peter, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” (John 21:6). As He gave those guys a second chance coupled with a tip on how to make it work better, He does the same for us. His word is filled with Godly wisdom for the multitude of life’s shortcomings we encounter. Seek it out…apply it…trust it.

The Lord has His ways of making us laugh even when we come up short. I sent the above picture to a Christian brother who seemingly can catch a fish in a pothole, and his response was, “Well…God calls some to be fishers of men!” All I could do was smile and laugh and realize that the big picture has little to do with me coming home with a limit of green, scaly-lipped, bass that will serve a meal or two to my family and then be gone. Rather, the big picture is that I strive to enter my forever home with as many lives impacted for the Kingdom as I possibly can. That’s the catch I want to make! But I will indeed be back on the water soon – hopefully to end the streak I’m on! So on the water catching big ‘uns, or on the bank catching nothing, somewhere out there, I’ll see you in the Great Outdoors!