Into the Deep Water

I really like Bonnie Raitt. I have had the good fortune to see her perform in concert four times and each time, she was brilliant. I believe her to be, probably, one of the best blues guitarists alive today. There are few people who can match her skill with a slide. And, of course, she is a huge star. She’s not as big, perhaps, as she once was, (but then, who is?). But for awhile in the 90s, she was huge, with hit after hit. And the way she appeared out of nowhere made her appear an over night success. But she was an overnight success that was twenty years in the making. She began performing in the late 60s, and got her first recording deal in the early 70s. By the time she had a huge hit in 1989, she had already put out ten albums, all of which had a little success, but not so much success to convince Warner Reprise to keep her on. They dropped her from the label in 1983. And that might have been the end of Bonnie Raitt, but it wasn’t. Which just goes to prove the power of persistence doesn’t it?

That is what I learned from running marathons. You don’t have to be fast to finish. You just have to put one foot in front of the other…for a very long time. Every marathon starts out the same. There is excitement and enthusiasm when the race begins. And those good feelings continue for the first ten miles or so. Then the legs start to get a little tired. By the time you get to mile twenty, the legs are shot. The human body is only built to run twenty miles, after that, you start to break down muscle tissue. You keep running. Your legs begin to scream. You see the vans parked along the course waiting to take home those poor souls who decide it isn’t worth it and give up the race, but you continue. And those last six miles of the race seem like the longest six miles of the entire race. But if you just hang in there and keep putting that one foot in front of the other, you will see the finish line looming up ahead. And by the time you get in that home stretch, you begin to sprint. You cannot even say from where you pull that last bit of power. You did not even know you had it. And then you cross that line, and they put a medal around your neck, and you feel a sense of pride and accomplishment that cannot truly be described. And even if you’re the last person across the line, you feel like a winner.

That’s the lesson about living I learned from the marathon. You don’t have to cross the line first and get all the glory. That’s nice, I suppose. But all you have to do is keep plodding along, and you will still cross the finish line. And your accomplishment is just as great. Greater in fact. For the winner of the marathon will put in about 95% effort for a little over two hours. But as a back of the pack runner, you will be putting in 95% effort for four hours or even more. I never ran one under five. If they were to measure success by the amount of effort exerted, the back of the pack runners would win every time. And I think that’s what life is all about. You don’t give up. You just keep going, no matter what. You just keep going.

I’m sure Peter felt like giving up. According to Luke, Peter and his brothers had been out fishing all day long, from sun up to sun down. Imagine what it must have been like out on that lake, the Sea of Galilee, with the hot sun beating down on you relentlessly, throwing your nets out time and time again, and finding little or no fish in them. Then to finally come to the conclusion that you would be bringing nothing in today, rowing the boat home to shore, tired, disappointed, worried (this was their livelihood, after all). You get your boats to shore, drag the nets out of the boats and start to clean them, while that Jesus fellow you just met a couple of days ago goes and stands on your boat and begins talking to the crowds there who had followed him there to listen.

And then, once you have your nets all clean, this Jesus fellow steps down off the boat and walks up to you and tells you to take your boat out again into the deep water (which is not close to the shore, Jack) and drop your nets again. You immediately protest. You say, “We have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.” Which is pretty nice of you, considering that this guy healed your mother in law of some sickness just the other day. Really, it’s the only reason you do what he says. You kind of figure you owe him one, and besides, your wife will kill you if you don’t. So you do. You schlep the nets back in the boat, row all the way out to the middle of the damn lake and throw your nets over just as he says, but this time, the nets are so filled with fish that you need to call another boat over to help you drag them in. You fill two boats with fish. Is it any wonder you drop to your knees and say, “My Lord! Leave me because I am a sinful man!” Anybody might feel a little undeserving under the circumstances, especially since you thought he was cracked to tell you to go out again.

Who knows why they caught so many fish this time out? Perhaps Jesus knew something about the feeding habits of these fish. Perhaps he knew where they were feeding. Perhaps it was a miracle. Or perhaps Jesus just understood that you don’t give up. You keep trying until you succeed. It doesn’t say in the story how long they waited out there in the deep water. You could get the feeling from the story that they caught those fish right away, but they may have been there for hours, as far as the text goes. Perhaps the whole point of this story is to tell us to keep on keeping on.

And for us, it’s not just the things we try to accomplish that we sometimes feel like quitting when times get tough. Sometimes we quit on each other. Sometimes there are people that you love, that begin to wear you down. And there are times you feel like you just can’t stand them anymore. And then, sometimes, you quit on them. You decide they just aren’t worth the effort. And who knows what you may have lost when you do. I have known some people longer than some of you reading this have been alive, and I know that there were times when I felt like quitting on some of them, but the love was there, and I held on. And in time, things got better, then they got worse, then they got better. That’s the way life is. But these long term relationships I have I treasure above all things, and the love I have for these people is deeper and stronger than I can possibly describe.

And there have been some people I haven’t liked very much, but for one reason or another, have been forced to work with them over a long time. And a funny thing happens after you work with someone for years and years; you get to know them. And the better you know them, the more you accept them. In the case of at least one person I know, it took about twenty years; but I’ve finally grown to love him.

And then other times, we give up on ourselves. We try to make changes in our lives. It happens every New Year’s Eve. We decide we are going to remake ourselves. We are going to drive out every demon (figuratively) that is dragging us down and keeping us from being what we want to be. We try to change all those bad habits we know we need to change. We’re going to start saving money. We’re going to lose that weight, begin exercising, start living healthy. We’re going back to school. We’re going to quit that go nowhere job and find something we really love doing. But along the way, things get hard, and then we give up. And we think that if we should happen to fail one day, it’s all over. But, as Muhammad Ali said, failure isn’t falling down, it’s staying down.

And then some people have given up on God. Perhaps they prayed for something once, and things didn’t turn out the way they had hoped. Or perhaps they tried going to church once, and found the service just too sappy, or too judgmental. Perhaps they listened to some hellfire and damnation sermon and decided they didn’t want any part of any God like that. It’s easy to look at the people who believe in God, whatever the religion, and decide they are too simple, to judgmental, too violent. Churchy people can be hard to hang with. First of all, most of them are so square. Or maybe the stories they’ve heard about God are just too much for a rational mind to buy. All these stories of miracles, healing the sick, rising from the dead, are a little hard for anybody familiar with even the most basic scientific facts to accept. That was a problem even in the Apostle Paul’s day. Even he had to explain to the Corinthians that there were some 500 people who had seen Jesus after the crucifixion, most of whom were still alive, and they could ask them if they didn’t believe him. When I was a young man, I was far too cynical to accept the idea of miracles, or of a loving God. But the longer I’ve lived, the more I’ve seen, the more I’ve come around to not finding those ideas more likely than they are unlikely.

Yes, I think the secret to life is living it. I think the key is not giving up, being persistent. Just put that one foot in front of the other and keep going. You never know what is going to be around the corner. Yeah, it could be horrible. But it could be wonderful, too. I think Peter and his brothers understood that then. That’s why they dropped everything to go follow this fellow Jesus who said, “Come with me, and I will make you fishers of men.” It’s easy to give up on things, but not very satisfying. So I do my best not to give up on the things I try to accomplish. I try not to give up on the kids I teach. And I try not to give up on the people I know. I try never to give up on myself. There is always hope. Everyday, live life to its absolute fullest, every minute, every second. Never give up. Never turn back. When you feel tired and broken and beaten, go back out in the deep water, and throw your net in again.