Fishers of Men

[hep_rsb]

Here is a really deep but encouraging way to look at evangelization. 

 

http://chaptertalks.blogspot.com/2016/02/fishers-of-men.html?m=1

 

My favorite paragraph

" Even with a hook and line there are different ways of fishing.   Sometimes you cast out far, letting your hook drop in some far off pocket that looks like it may be harboring a few hungry mouths.  Maybe this is what we do when we pray for the people and places where there is great suffering, when we wish for mercy for some soul who is too far away for us to see or touch, but who we know is out there – for refugees, for bullied kids, for criminals serving life sentences in our prisons.  Sometimes you trawl – just rowing along and letting your hook drift behind you as you go, just to pick up whoever you might pass by.  Perhaps this is the kind of fishing we do when we offer a smile in passing, quietly make the coffee someone has forgotten to make or clean up the crumbs someone has left behind without a fuss, leaving behind us an atmosphere of mercy with the words we use, or even just by the thoughts we think.  Sometimes when you fish you just let the hook dangle, to catch those who come up to you, close enough to nibble on your toes.  We’ve probably all experienced the gift of having someone respond to our anger or pain or fear with mercy – the kind of mercy that doesn’t even ask to be recognized as mercy because it seems to not to even recognize our fault.  It is like we are being let off the hook of our bad behavior, and this in itself hooks us. This is the mercy that chooses out of all the interpretations that we can put on another’s words or actions, to give it the best one. "