What Lies Beneath

(Where faith and fishing meet...)

The rumored great fall fishing season was turning apocryphal. The catching of fish slowed down in the heat of the end of summer, but just wait, I was told, the weather and the water will turn cool, and the fish will be back.

Just wait...

I'd been spending several evenings a week by the backyard pond, waiting, casting the most succulent of rubber worms that had bass jumping out of the water just weeks before. Nothing. I switched to the no-fail black woolybugger and a fly rod. Still nothing. I down-sized my expectations. If I wasn't able to catch bass, I'd go for the bluegill and crappie. I casted small foam spiders, tiny nymphs, and something called a gurgler that never fails to bring a bluegill to the surface. Nothing, nothing, nothing... It was as though someone removed all the fish from the pond.

It was time for desperate measures.

I mixed a small amount of flour, salt and water and kneaded it into a stretchy dough, dense enough to wrap around a small hook and not fall off on the first cast. I then rigged my spinning rod with a light weight and a slip bobber, setting the hook to drop about two feet below the surface of the water when it landed. I had resorted to the fishing style that I had first experienced as a child, one that I had used with my own children in the days when they actually thought that maybe fishing with their mother might be fun.

Casting the dough, watching the bobber for any signs of motion, I was reflecting on why I felt the need to prove to myself that there were actually fish in the pond. Of course there were - hundreds, probably thousands of them, just none that were particularly interested in what I had been offering them. They would be jumping out of the water, and hitting anything I threw at them, if not later this fall, then certainly next spring. Still, I wanted to see that something was happening and I wanted to see it now. The bobber, with its dough bait below, started to move sideways and pull under. I pulled it in to find the dough gone. I put more on and watched the same bobbing motions and corresponding ripples play out again and again. I did catch a few small bluegill, but the real satisfaction came from seeing the bobber move about, seeing those ripples, indicating that, yes, there was still an active fish community thriving under the weedy dark water of early fall.

All this gets me thinking about the unseen results of prayer, and how it can sometimes be a lot like fall fishing. I know prayer stirs things up, causes movement in the spiritual realm. Often, God graciously allows me to see the movement, the lives being changed, the growth taking place, the holy activity that occurs when God acts in response to my prayer. Other times...nothing. I wait and pray more, sometimes differently, sometimes desperately, waiting to see Him respond to whatever it is I am praying for. My faith tells me God is always moving, acting on behalf of His people even if I don't see a thing happening. I know I have seen Him move and act in the past and I know I will see Him do it again in the future. But sometimes, I just need to get a glimpse of movement now, the action of some spiritual bobber, letting me know that, yes, there is life taking place in that great unseen spiritual realm where God sees all. So I throw out a dough-bait-bobber prayer that acknowledges God's faithfulness, His sovereignty over all things, but could He maybe let me see just a small sign of movement? Then I fix my eyes on Him and wait for the ripples to appear...

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. - Hebrews 11:1