Basketball season ended last night on March 15. Tonight, I was sitting at my desk. I was looking around the area and came across my God Box that I had made at the beginning of the year. A God Box can be made of anything, and the point of it is to write down your worries or prayer requests and put it in the box. And as soon as you let go of that piece of paper, you let go of your burdens. So I started going through it (noticing that all of them were from August), finding little slips of paper saying, "Give me the strength to get through workouts"; "Use me to transform this team into disciplined disciples of Jesus"; "Your are in control. Transform this team. Our hearts and minds, let them be in your care"; "I want to pray to you with confidence. Without worry. It is you who is in control." But then I picked out a normal sized piece of paper, that was bulky from being folded so many times, with many questions on it. They were listed: How many times have you showed up and I didn't recognize you?, Why is it easier for you to look past my failures instead of me?, Why do I forget about your unending love?, How come I depend on myself even when I know you are my only source of help?, Why do I delay our communication everyday?, Why do I sacrifice my day by not starting it off with you?, Why can't I accept that you are my greatest encourager?, Why do I let my mind limit who you really are?, Why am I too lazy to pray to you when I know it will fill me up? But the last question I stumbled on. "Why don't I swim to you?" When I first read it I became really confused. Swim? What? Then, I remembered.
In John 21, the story of Jesus appearing to seven of his followers explains that question. Peter and some of the other disciples went out fishing and caught nothing. The next morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the followers did not know it was him, and he asked if they caught any fish. They said no, and Jesus told them to throw their net on the right side of the boat and they would catch some. So they did, and they caught so many fish they couldn't even pull the net back into the boat. I'm sure most of you have heard this story before, but here is the best part that is always overlooked: One of the followers told Peter that the man on the shore was Jesus, and when Peter heard this, he took off his clothes and JUMPED INTO THE WATER. The boat was not far from the shore, so the other disciples just paddled to it. If Peter would have stayed in the boat like everyone else, he would have gotten there in no time. But that didn't matter to him. The second he realized it was Jesus he dropped everything and did whatever it took to get to him.
So where am I in this story? Where are you? Are we paddling to shore, getting to Jesus on our own time? Or are we dropping everything, jumping out of the boat and swimming to Jesus?
