One thing I love about God is how He says the same things to us in different ways and it doesn’t matter where we go, we can never outrun His messages! Last week we had the pleasure of being away on holiday on the Isle of Man, a truly wonderful place. As is our custom, we looked around for a church to attend on Sunday and found an Elim church in Onchan, a few miles from where we were staying, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, which directed us to the front doors with no problems! We had a wonderful time there, savouring God’s presence and enjoying meeting new family we didn’t even know we had!
The pastor there (John Powell) preached from Luke 5, the story where Peter and James and John are mending their nets after a hard night’s fruitless labour, and Jesus comes into Peter’s boat to preach and ends up commanding them to fish again. This time, the catch is so huge that the boat begins to sink and the nets begin to break and Peter and the disciples begin to understand something of their new destiny as fishers of men.
It’s a familiar story and one that seemed even more relevant on an island where fishing is still an important part of everyday life. Everywhere we went, we saw boats and nets! (We even saw the oldest yacht in the world, the Peggy, at Castletown’s Nautical Musuem.)
But what struck us most of all was the reminder, as so many sermons here have done recently, that God is with us in all circumstances. He actually gets into our boat, into the messy, stinky circumstances of our everyday lives, and helps us. He is the one who can direct our lives anew and give us fresh purpose and hope. After the death and resurrection of Christ, Peter and his friends went back to fishing. Then they were met by Jesus on the shore, cooking a fish breakfast for them. They may have thought that their lives would just carry on as before, but Jesus had other ideas for them! And He has plenty of ideas for our lives too…