You never know...

On Saturday from 7 am-2 pm, I participated in a kayak fishing tournament hosted by paddle-fishing.com. I really didn't enter the tournament with any expectations other than hoping to build relationships and meet some new folks. It's always nice to have hobbies in which you can use for a greater purpose. Then you don't have to do something ELSE just to do outreach.
So the fishing was simply a means to an end.

I didn't expect to do well since I was fishing an area I'd never fished before. I was not disappointed. I ended up with 6-7 trout and no reds or snook.

The goal is to catch and take pictures of a snook, red fish, and trout (what we call a "slam"), and then add the inches of the largest snook, red, and trout. Since I didn't catch any redfish or snook, I figured there was no need take more pictures of trout. What I didn't realize was that everyone had a slow day, and NO ONE caught any snook. Therefore people just added up the inches of their trout. And third place was 40 inches. I caught at least 3 trout over 14 inches, and you can probably realize that adds up to more than 4o inches. I lost out on nearly 200 dollars because I figured, "What's the point, there's no way I can win?"

I believe the psychological term for that is "learned helplessness." Ultimately you feel like you will fail, so there's no reason to even try. But just like a fishing tournament, you really never know what will become of your faithfulness. It was a good reminder to me to keep plugging along faithfully in the work that God has called me to do. You never know what may become of it. Here's a "for instance."

One of the intended purposes of our neighborhood Xmas party was to invite folks to the Xmas Eve service. Last year no one from the party came to the service. This year, a neighbor brought it up in conversation that he and his family were hoping to attend.

I guess that's why I'm so drawn to fishing and ministry: you just never know what you'll catch, literally or proverbially.