The day I met Jesus was awful.
To begin with, I was exhausted. The guys and I had been up all night trying to catch some fish and we just couldn’t catch a single one. By morning, I had given up and was ready to eat seaweed instead. I was cleaning out my nets when this stranger sauntered up to the edge of the water and asks if he can use my boat. He was speaking to a crowd of people on the shore, and the crowd was getting so big that he needed a stage. “Sure,” I said, “I’m not using it.” He stood in my boat and I listened as I continued cleaning my nets. I was captivated. His teachings seemed so wise, his demeanor so calm. When he finished and the crowds began to disperse, he stepped out of my boat, clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.” For a moment I considered saying, “You think we haven’t tried that?” but then I thought, what do we have to lose?
Wherever those fish had been hiding, they all came out. Our nets were so full that they were breaking and it took all of us just to drag them to shore. As we were sweating and hauling this mass of fish, I wondered about the stranger. How did he know that we would have a catch this time? And not just a few fish, but the biggest catch I’d ever seen! When we finally made it to shore and the others began counting the fish, I turned to look at him to find that he was looking back at me. I was enamored by him. By his powerful yet compassionate gaze. And I knew that he was responsible for our catch. He had done more than command us to cast our nets; he had orchestrated the fish’s appearance. I wanted him to remain near to me, yet I couldn’t stand his nearness. More accurately, I couldn’t stand the stark contrast between his power and my failure, his perfection and my brokenness. His presence overwhelmed me, and I collapsed under his greatness, falling to his feet and crying out, “Go away from me Lord; I am a sinful man!”
When he refused to leave, I was both terrified and grateful. I wanted to know more about this man, but I wanted to study him from a distance. But distance was not something that he believed in. This man was all about closeness. So, rather than do as I asked and leave, he reached out and touched me, pulled me up, and looked me in the eye as he said, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” His words made no sense to me, but his touch and his gaze had me shaking. I knew at that moment that I could either stay with this phenomenal catch of fish to lead a life of comfort and the question of what might have been, or I could follow this man and never be comfortable again.
Immediately, my decision to give up everything for this strange, hypnotic, and somehow perfect man proved itself to be unconventional. As I followed him through town, a leper came up to him. How he did it I’ll never know. I couldn’t approach this man without shaking in fear, and yet this leper, who was ritually impure and considered a lost cause by society at large, approached him willingly and boldly. “Lord, if you are willing you can make me clean,” he said.
And then he touched the leper.
That touch of power, that touch which says, “I know all about you,” rippled through the dirty, outcast leper, transforming him before my eyes. In only a moment he was clean. Completely cured. Only his rags made him look any different from me.
The leper and I, both broken and unclean in our own ways, encountered this perfect person in ways that radically altered our lives. I met him and saw with perfect clarity, for the first time, how broken and in need of saving I was. The leper met him and saw, for the first time, how much potential he had. My encounter humbled me while the leper’s gave him confidence. They seem like entirely different experiences, but perhaps they were not. Perhaps, in the face of perfection – of perfect love – we come to see ourselves clearly, both everything we have been and everything we could be. In light of perfect love, we are shaken and strengthened by humility and confidence.
Neglected Word 