I don’t know a thing about fishing. I know fish though.
When I was sixteen I worked at two Fish and Chip shops in South London. The hours were less than ideal, but something about the repetitive nature of the work was enthralling.
I would wake up around 4AM. Potatoes ran through my hands one after the other. Peeled, de-eyed, chipped. Then the fish—England has some of the best seafood out there, we are an island after all. We’d prepare the fish with lemon and brine. Hundreds of times a day we’d flour, batter, and fry the fish we prepared.
I never once thought about how they’d gotten there though.
People turned up with a van. Boxes of fish were exchanged for cash.
That’s as far as my knowledge went.
A few years ago, during Covid, I saw a young man with an old fishing rod standing over a stream. I didn’t think much about it. Then, a few days later, it happened again. It became commonplace. To be clear, this isn’t allowed in the UK, I don’t think it is really allowed anywhere.
I don’t know if they caught anything, and I don’t think that they were doing it for fun. There were no boxes of fish, because they had no cash to exchange. Something about hunger, about desperation, led them to that stream.
I worked that job through long hours, and meagre pay. They gave me room and board, and I was thankful. Those boys stood out for hours just waiting, and I bet that when they finally caught something, they were ecstatic.
Sometimes, we need a measure of desperation and hunger to put our hands to work. You might be gifted as a fisher of men, or in preparing them once they come in through the door. Have you been using that gifting of late? Have you seen God move in and through you? Fall1 is a time of shifting temperatures, climates, and habits. Why not ask God today to shift your hunger levels too?
Grace and Peace,
Adsum Try Ravenhill is married to Anna and together they are passionate about seeing men and women discipled in the context of the local church. They live in Reading, UK and are part of a church plant that meets in the town hall. Adsum edits the GCD Weekly Newsletter and can be found through his writing at The Raven’s Writing Desk. You can find all of Adsum’s previous articles for GCD here.
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I originally wrote Autumn, but thankfully I caught myself!