Sunday school lesson--Doing the "hard thing"

Today's gospel was about Jesus calling the first apostles. He tells Simon to cast his net into the deeper water. Simon says "but we have been fishing here all night and haven't caught a thing." Nonetheless, Jesus tells him what to do and he does it. The men haul in a huge catch of fish--so full it was tearing the nets. Simon, realizing Jesus' authority as God, falls at his feet, begging forgiveness. Jesus gives him the words of comfort and forgiveness: "Do not be afraid. From now on I will make you fishers of men."

I taught Sunday school this morning on this lesson. We talked about how sometimes we feel just like Simon: we don't want to do the "hard thing"---casting out in deeper water. There are days when we don't feel like being friendly, cleaning the bathroom, doing homework, practicing piano, typing a blog, but yet we need to do those hard things. In most cases, doing them reaps great benefits. Sometimes it comes in the form of a pat on the back for hard work, a kind word, an extra buck (I told the kids), or special privilege. Sometimes, the hard work yields our own, personal satisfaction that we persevered and kept up the hard work, despite what is before us. Here in our corner of the world in Gravois Creek, we don't have to clean up after an earthquake, trying to find our loved ones or a simple drink of water. Our hard jobs are comparably much easier, and yet sometimes we are blinded by our own selfishness to even see beyond the "hard thing." We still need that extra push to cast out into the deep water, and if we do, we will definitely get a full net's worth of fish.