Old boat, new possibilities…

James Cathcart May 04, 2025 3 3

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John 21: 1-3 (NIVUK)

21 Afterwards 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.

The ex-disciple Peter — adrift — falls back on what he knows and where he knows. It’s sand and sweat, salt and water, fish guts and moonlight. Here his tears have purpose — to wash out his eyes; to help him blink back the exertion, the grit, the odours of the lake, the dazzle of the morning light on the water as the sun rises on another day.

The scrambled timelines of the last few days is too much to look at directly. Better the lake and the moonlight than the sleepless questioning.

A fishless night of sorrow, before a fishful day of wonder, of gut wrenching return.

But that is still to come.

For now: empty nets, heaving lungs, coarse woodgrain, tense silence. Still water, undisturbed by fish or conversation.

His life recently has been something new, improved, gripped by a calling he is somehow both more and less sure of than this boating life.

This boat, once his means of escape, is now just a holding pattern, a suspense of bodies above the water, meaningfully going nowhere, achieving nothing.

But the day has only just begun. 

And within earshot:

Jesus.

Prayer:

Dear Jesus,

You find us in our old boats,

our old patterns

our old ways

suspended

unsure and unfulfilled 

and you call out

always within earshot 

always present.

Amen.