My dad has a long cane pole hanging in his garage.
When we visited for Christmas, I asked him to tell my sons about it.
“Well, it was Papa’s,” he said, meaning his dad, “and he called it a Calcutta cane pole.” Dad went on to describe the way Papa held the pole, the way he braced himself on the side of the bridge when he was fighting a big fish, and the way he would swing the fish up and out of the water of the Indian River Lagoon to land it high up on that bridge.
When Jesus called his first disciples, they were fishermen. They were busy doing what fishermen do. Simon and Andrew were casting a net. James and John were mending nets in their boat.
Jesus told them, “I will make you become fishers of men.”
Fishing is a lot more than just catching. Fishing is casting and mending. Fishing is knowing when and where the fish will be and why. Fishing is understanding bait. Fishing is time, resources, attention, and initiative.
When Jesus told the disciples He would make them become fishers of men, He knew that it wasn’t going to be a one day conference.
He knew too that His church would need to repurpose the skills they already had to cast and to mend.
When we share the Gospel or invite someone over to talk about Jesus, we are casting. Every fisherman knows that when you cast your net, you often get a lot of things you didn’t intend. You will have to toss the starfish aside if you were looking for mullet.
Jesus knew that every casted invitation would not result in the desired fish. However, He wanted casters who wouldn’t give up casting just because results were thin. Simon Peter must have been one of these since the Bible tells us that on at least two occasions, he fished all night without catching anything.
A fisherman learns to have perseverance.
Secondly, fishers of men who had once been fishermen would have understood that nets tear. They must be mended. Church life can be ugly. Relationships tear even within the body of Christ, but when Jesus called us to be fishers of men, He called us to be menders. A bit of string or fishing line from a different reel might have to be used to mend a torn cast net.
A fisherman learns to be resourceful.
“By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another,” Jesus said. Love covers a multitude of sins, and it also mends broken nets in the church so that we will be able to cast them again.
The cane pole might be old, but we repurposed it while we were at Dad’s in order to get a frisbee off the roof. Dad laughed and smiled as he held the pole in his hand, and I realized that fishers of men never retire, just like the old cane pole.
Sarah Dixon Young 