Immediately...

“Immediately, they left their nets and followed Him”

¹⁸ As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. ¹⁹ And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” ²⁰ Immediately they left their nets and followed him. ²¹ As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. ²² Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him. Matthew 4:18–22

Reflection:

I find it a little hard to wrap my head around the idea of four people immediately leaving their life’s work and following Jesus. In one sense, in our culture, we understand immediacy. We are really into instant gratification. I can download a song from iTunes in under a minute, and I can have a Kindle book ready to read in only few minutes. Instantly, I can connect with friends all over the world. Information flows seamlessly at incredible speeds.

But on the other hand, the easy access to information can make choices more difficult to make. If I want to make a career change, I can immediately find out all kinds of information about job prospects, salary ranges and long term career potential. With all that information, I can spend almost endless time weighing the pros and cons of any possible change.

Even when I, personally, felt called to ministry, I had internet access to programs of study at multiple seminaries and access to the details of the ELCA candidacy process. I “knew” what I was getting into (or so I thought)!!!

Jesus’ potential disciples had no such access to information. They met Jesus, he called them to follow him, and immediately they left their nets and followed him. What was it about Jesus that drew them to him? How did they know what an impact Jesus was going to have? How did they deal with the fallout from their decision to follow Jesus? Who cleaned the nets they dropped? Who provided support for their families, and what did Zebedee think when his sons suddenly abandoned him?

Although it is hard to picture dropping everything and immediately following Jesus, are there things we can learn from these disciples’ actions? When we, personally, come up with all kinds of objections to a call that God gives us, how might the experience of the disciples influence us? How might we calm our quest for one more piece of instantaneous information to logically support our decision making, and instead, let God act in and through us?

Prayer:

Gracious God, you call me to do things that sometimes I can’t understand. Sometimes the things seem to difficult to take on. Help me Lord to learn from the immediacy of the disciples call response and help me to calm my need for “one more” piece of information. Let me respond for Jesus’ sake and not on the basis of human logic. Amen