Leaving Father Behind

They left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.
--Mark 1:20

I have a hunch that one of the things we have to do to become disciples is to leave what is safe and comfortable behind. We have to leave the past, the security of family, the comfort of the way things have always been done in order to enter into the new community of the Spirit in Jesus. If the fishermen had stayed with their father they would have continued to be good fishermen, but they wouldn't have been doing what they were called to do.

Yet we are often a people of looking back, usually with longing and nostalgia. We often makes moves into the future and second-guess what used to be. "The good old days" or "the way we have always done it" or "my mother cooked it this way" are all different ways of saying the same thing...the past is always better than the present.

Except when we dream about the future. Then the future (which is never reached) is where all the best is yet to be. So we live in the "betterness" of the past and the "bestness" of the future while ignoring the work and calling of today. We cannot work in the past or future. We can only work today.

So leave father behind. Let the past be the past. Look around and see where God is moving and working. Look around and discover the paths that are open, not the ones that lead back. Those go nowhere. Build on the best of the past, add to what's working so that more and more can be done.

Never been fishing for men? Now's the time.