Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: PICNIC (07/14/22)
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TITLE: A Call to the Lake - and a Call at the Lake | Previous Challenge Entry
By Noel Mitaxa
07/21/22 -
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Whispering at first, but it had got louder as I’d tried to get my head
around what had been happening.
Three years ago, the lake was all I knew.
But then life began changing with a simple request. “Follow me, and let’s catch people,” said the carpenter-rabbi. And as we did, we quickly found to be master of whatever we came across.
After more than three years, I should have got used to seeing him doing impossible things: lame people suddenly leaping away from crutches they no longer needed; others blinking and shielding their eyes against unexpected glare, but embracing their families and friends in a world they had only ever felt their way around; the stunned faces of others who held their ears against crowd noises they could never even imagined; and still others whose faces were shaping the sentences they could have only ever imagined themselves saying.
All of them laughing and crying with joy, while ex-lepers joined in the hugs and fun they had long been denied.
Our master never tried to dazzle anyone with the miracles. Even when he brought his friend Lazarus and a synagogue leader’s daughter back to life, he just said they were asleep. But when Lazarus had died four days earlier? And when professional mourners had begun working around the little girl’s body?
Miracles kept right on happening, but one of the most notable was a lakeside fast-food miracle picnic just north of here near Bethsaida. A kid on his way home from a miserable day’s fishing; only two fish to show for it; became the local hero of a massive catering coup. Those two fish and a few small loaves somehow fed over five thousand people – with plenty of scraps left over.
It was exciting stuff, but his teaching, and how he cut through the façade of religious leaders who challenged him, was something else. Our group would be mobbed by crowds, but we never that the leaders would stoop to concocting crimes that would provoke the Romans into action.
Two night-time interrogations and a show-trial passed sentence of death by crucifixion. The crowds came; the leaders salivated and celebrated; and we watched – helplessly and hopelessly – and he was dead after only six hours.
Devastated by all this, we had nowhere to go. But he wasn’t finished. He found us and came back a couple of times. It was all too much. Surely a night’s fishing would clear my mind, and six others agreed.
Dawn’s morning shadows had us close to shore, with still-empty nets, low energy levels and no interest in any meet-and-greet. Yet out of the dullness we heard a call, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?”
“No,” we shouted back.
“Throw your net on the right side of your boat,” he replied, “and you will find some.”
That’s when John said, “It’s Jesus!” With that, I jumped into the water and waded ashore. The others rowed the boat, beaching it with the net still in the water.
Jesus was waiting, with some bread and a charcoal fire grilling some fish. “Let’s have breakfast,” he said, “and bring some of your catch.” I immediately contrasted how our picnic for eight of us had much more food than he had used to feed the crowd near Bethsaida.
Then, as we finished, he asked me three times how much I loved him. “Yes, Lord,” I said, “you know that I love you.”
Each time I said this, he told me to feed his lambs. It hurt to him to press me like that, but I’ve since found that loving him is not shown by my emotions, but by following him to where I may nourish people who need to know him as the bread of eternal life.
Sometimes that’s a struggle, but other times it can be a real picnic…
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Excellent entry. Congratulations.