Swamping Our Boat - September 27, 2010

Daily Lectionary for September 27, 2010
Psalm 60
Hosea 2:2-15
Acts 20:17-38
Luke 5:1-11

Hosea 2:2-15
Similar to yesterday's theme from the Psalm, here we have a passage about what we do with the opportunities and resources that God gives us.  In an odd way, it's a stewardship piece.  God gives us grain and wine and oil and silver and gold and wool and what do we do with these many blessings?  We make idols of them.  We imagine they are self-producing, not bothering to step back and see that they are all gifts from God.  The hurt that this attitude brings to God and the yearning for the relationship to be set right just pours out of these verses.  It is hard to read these verses and not feel chastened and yet it is also hard to read these verses and not feel God's intense love for each of us.

Luke 5:1-11
Jesus finishes preaching (from his position in Peter's boat) and when he is done he has them take him out to deeper water and asks them to let down their nets in spite of the fact that they have been fishing and have caught nothing.  "When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break."(v.6)  Same lake, same boat, same folks, same fish - add Jesus and they get a different result.  Yesterday in worship we sang the hymn "Count Your Many Blessings".  I suspect that many times we find it very easy to count our burdens, count our challenges, count the things we are anxious about, count our problems.  And for the most part, we have those things and they are real, not our imagination.  But they can cloud our vision to where we count those things to the exclusion of the primary thing, the main thing which is our blessings.  This Monday let's try to listen for Jesus, let down our nets and see if the blessings in our boat don't just about swamp the thing.