Casting Our Nets

Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.

I had so many problems in my life, financial, marital, emotional, you name it. No spiritual problems, though, since I hadn’t gone to Mass or prayed for decades. I wasn’t smart enough to think there might be some linkage there.

But people started coming into my life, many of whom are still in it in some form or another more than a dozen years later:

• Cec, a gifted writer, minister, and missionary with twinkling eyes. After the first time we met, he prayed intentionally every day for a year for me to rediscover God.
• Patricia, whose stories of raising four children on her own, without child support, told with humor and truth. She showed me that maybe there was a place with God for imperfect people.
• Julie, an American Baptist minister, who kept the faith despite losing a toddler son to disease and a husband to a good friend. She showed me other people had problems much worse than mine, and found comfort in faith that can’t be found in the world.

There were many more, of course. And when I later thanked them for the way they had shown Christ to me, many were grateful but puzzled. They’d just been being themselves.

We don’t always see the fish caught for Him when we cast our nets. But they’re there, in surprising numbers. All we have to do is be the people He desires us to be.