If the Ocean Has a Soul: Diving Into God’s WordSample

Fishing and Faith

Fishing isn’t entirely about catching fish. It’s about feeling the warm sunshine cascading through overhanging boughs of golden-barked pines. It’s about the hard sliding pebbles underfoot as you balance in frigid crystal water. It’s about the songs of birds and rivers and wind, rejoicing in something greater than merely the day’s catch.

While this isn’t the way some people enjoy fishing, to me, it’s the ideal way to experience nature. If I just so happen to catch a fish, I’ll reel it in, unhook the creature, spend a moment admiring the way light touches its gorgeously colored scales, and then release it back into its wilderness home.

Once, while practicing casting line over the water, I accidentally caught a fish. I hadn’t baited the hook, and suddenly, three casts in, a six-inch bass bit down. Once in my hands, the fish gazed back at me with dazzling golden eyes as I removed the new lip piercing and gently set her back in the water. Hesitating only a moment, she disappeared like a flash into the depths.

More often than not, the opposite happens. Instead of catching a fish accidentally, you intend to catch a fish and never do. This is what happened to Jesus’ disciples. After a long night of being on the lake and casting nets, they hadn’t caught anything. Then, Jesus called out to them from the shore, telling them to throw their net “on the right side of the boat.” When the disciples followed his bizarre directions, their net came up teeming so full that “they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish” (John 21:6).

This isn’t the only time we see Jesus exercising his authority over creation, and particularly over water. The first recorded miracle he performed was to transform water into wine (John 2:7-9). Another time, Jesus rebuked stormy seas, and they immediately quieted into calmness (Mark 4:39-41). And as if this wasn’t already impressive enough, he was also seen physically walking on stormy waves (John 6:18-20).

Unlike us—who aren’t able to determine whether we catch a fish or not, who are completely at the mercy of the surrounding weather—Jesus has total authority. Wind, waves, and fish of the sea obey him. This is the Jesus who promised to make his followers “fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). As we cast our line out over the waters, enjoying relationship with the greatest fisherman himself, he is at work both above and beneath the surface, working through us to calm the storms of the world, do impossible things, and call others to himself.