"And at once they left their nets and followed him"
Mark 1:14-20
However, that wasn't the end of their days or nights of fishing. They didn't leave those boats and hang up their nets on a hook to grow dry, cracked and useless. Many other times in the Gospels, Peter and Andrew, James and John, were to be found out on the water fishing, sometimes even with Jesus in the boat with them. It seems that many a night especially, they were out on the water, waiting for their nets to fill with fish. The fishers of men contiued to be fishers of fish, at least while Jesus was still with them in person, before His ascension. They had grown up fishing, it was what they knew and the sea would have been dep in their hearts.
When Jesus says to us today, "The times has come ... repent and believe the Good News ... follow me..." He is unlikely to be asking us to shake everything up, walk out of the house and abandon all our responsibilities. Neither is He asking us to chenge who we are deep within. Whatever we have grown up with, our deepest desires, interests, talents and passions - all make us who we are. Just as the sons of Zebedee were sons of a fisherman, seafarers through and through, Jesus knows our hearts and what makes us who we are.
For those brand new disciples, the first of the twelve, Jesus offered an invitation to become His followers. John the baptist had just been arrested and his followers were scattering or were joining Jesus instead. These new young men were being invited to live in the Divine Will, to open their hearts to a new way of thinking, living and being - they were being invited into the Kingdom of Heaven, which Jesus told them was 'close at hand'. They would change within, grow and learn the lessons of their lives over the next three years.
Think of how someone like John, the young disciple, so beloved of the Lord, had grown in courage and deep understanding of the Kingdom Jesus preached about. Think of how Jesus built on John's naturally loving heart and turned him into the Apostle of Love.
Yet the fishermen would remain findamentally the same. They'd still be fishermen. After the resurrection they'd still be eating fish with Jesus at the water's edge, at home on the sand, happy on the water, calmed by the cooling sea breeze. Their association with Jesus didn't make them rich, powerful or immune from the oppressive Roman laws. Nor did they develop skills that transformed their earthly existence a great deal on a human level. Indeed, by the time of the resurrecton they were on the run from the law.
When Jesus says, 'don't be afraid' to step out and say our 'yes' to the Divine Will, He means it. When Jesus asks us, everyday, 'Follow me', He is offering us an invitation to go on a journey within of a lifetime! He won't be asking us to bend outselves into a different mould or to try to be an inauthentic version of ourselves. He loves us as we are and only wants us to become more and more us through His healing, transformative love. However, we will still need to put the bins out. Our daily reality is still with us but this can also be transformed when we know that we can do all the little duties with great love and that what we're doing is His will fo us today.
Let's leave our nets and follow Him today, trusting that, over time we will grow more into the men and women we are to become, as the disciples did, even through the seemingly unremarkable details of our days.
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