Being the Church #39

Christ's apostles had been through a whirlwind of activity with Jesus: from the Triumphal Entry to the upper room, the garden, the cross, and then finally, His appearances to them after His resurrection. We don't know exactly what their thinking was at this point, but there must have been some thought like this: "What next?" Consider John's last chapter, 21:

 Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee. It happened this way: 2 Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. 3 “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
4 Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.
5 He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?”
“No,” they answered.
6 He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they di, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish."

It's somewhat of a spoiler, but you can imagine what happens next. They realize: "This has happened before. When Jesus had originally called them, they had been fishing, and after an empty-handed night, Jesus had come and told them to go out and drop their net at a certain place. When they did they had a catch too heavy to handle.  What's the point? Sometimes we tend to forget what Jesus has taught us before. We need reminders of who we are, what God has called us to be, and what we ought to be doing.  May we have such moments today, and respond appropriately to them.