The Fish Don't Care That You Work Hard

Fish don't care that you work hard. They thwart you at every move. You pick you gear carefully, pour over depth charts, read strategy guides, and cast till your body aches. Yet, you often don't catch a single fish. The trees are the same. They don't give a rip about your banana nut bread. Pawpaws don't care if they give you diarrhea. Mushrooms don't fruit on anyones schedule but their own. We can hardly forecast a week ahead sometimes. Yet, anyone who loves the outdoors will say that despite this, maybe even because of this, the woods have changed them.

A metaphor of life

I recently had a humbling experience. I was raised in a Pentecostal Church, speaking in tongues, dancing, the whole sche-bang. Most of my life in following God I've been surrounded by the charismatic movement. For those who don't know those terms, they are the weird Christians, the ones who believe in healing. They are the ones who write most of the songs people sing in church, no matter what denomination you are. They are divisive. They are so often sincere, amazing people. They are also, as a movement, as any movement, deeply flawed in some areas. As a young, eager follower of Jesus, I wanted to do the stuff. Pray late into the night? I'll do it! Pray for the sick? I'll do it! I've even spit on my hands and put them on my eyes praying that my eyesight would get better. That's a whole blog in itself about how we apply and interpret scripture and also, probably an overshare.

All that to say, the biggest challenges to a person who is reaching for the divine are accumulated disappointments and spiritual pride. On the one hand, God is not reliable in the way that some people portray him. He is like the woods. He is wild, he can be dangerous to your health, but he can also be home, adventure, purpose, sustenance, and the most extravagant beauty all rolled into one. There are days like the days when we sit on the bank for eight hours, EIGHT HOURS, and nothing happens! God doesn't utter a word. It's no wonder that so many of the Psalms are desperate cries of, "God! Where in the Carmen San Diego did you go?" After all, Jesus himself shuddered in pain and screamed, "My God, My God. Why have you forsaken me?" Taken alone, these experiences can be crippling. I don't blame people who've given up after praying for healing a thousand times. I won't lie. It's still hard for me to do that.

My friend Inatius and an eleven inch bluegill he caught on my bachelor party trip. It shocked us all!

Yet, if I've learned anything in being a woodsman, it's that persistence pays off. Some of my biggest catches have been at the last minute, after catching nothing worth mentioning for a month. There's a sudden tug on the line, or I just happen to look in the right place where I'd walked before. God is also like that. You turn over every log. You rip the cushions out of the couch looking for him and after you've wallowed in despair for an hour, you look up and there he is, sitting on the floor next to you, smiling. That's when things get interesting. He never says what we expect. He comforts us when we retch at the thought of a sympathetic word. He rebukes us when we think that we need a big hug. Unlike people, though, he doesn't misstep. The whole situation, our personal history, the context, even the burrito we had that put us in a worse mood is all factored into his response.

Well, I didn't forget about danger number two. Spiritual pride. Humans measure each other. It's natural, so much so that we do it without even realizing it. I too often find myself standing judge over other people's expressions of worship, especially if they're loud. Recently, God did a double whammy on me. It was like going to the river, getting your favorite bobber stuck in a tree, getting soaked trying to get it out, losing it, and the breaking your reel getting back to land. He poked my tender spot, the spot that had been festering because of my life as a weird believer. Then, he convicted me. All Jesus' teachings about, "Hypocrite! Take the plank out of your own eye," and, "By the measure you judge, you will be judged," came tumbling on top of me. Yet, it wasn't crushing. It was freeing. I saw that brutal irony of the human experience, that we often become the things we hate. I hated spiritual comparison, so to protect myself from people I thought would hurt me, I started comparing people's spirituality, trying to determine their motives and hearts to weed out the bad ones. How stupid!

So, if you're stuck and you find yourself constantly on guard, constantly hostile to people, you might try talking with the God of the woods. You might get lost in a pine grove, get your shirt tangled in nettles, take a few spider webs to the face. At the end of it, you might find an answer. Or, you might not. You might have to go back. Over and over again until one day, you see God up in a tree, like a Chicken of the Woods, so bright orange that you can't believe you missed him before. The point is, life is not reliable. God is not reliable, but he is trustworthy. The old Pentecostals were right in saying He's an on time God. It's just that, he doesn't work on our time.

Stick with it and you might catch a catfish...no, wait. That wasn't the life advice I meant to give.