Slippery little buggars.

Barry and I were enjoying the beautiful, warm summer weather.  We arrived early at the lake for a morning of quiet fishing.  Once our lines were in the water, we relaxed in the early calm.  We caught a few fish too small to keep.  But then I hooked into something that put up a pretty good fight.  After a few moments we had it successfully lying on the dock.  I turned around to grin at Barry - it only took a second - and when I looked back my fish was flip-flopping its way across the dock back to the water.  The struggle was on.  The struggle was real.  Every time I grabbed the fish and tried to squeeze it, it slipped out of my hands like a wet bar of soap.  The two of us danced at the end of the dock until finally, with one last flip-flop tango move, the fish escaped my grasp and happily escaped to the depths.  I wonder how he told the story to his friends:  “There’s an idiot a the end of that line;  no eye-hand coordination but he can put a worm on a hook.”

Behind me, Barry was laughing so hard he was about to fall off the dock.  Between gasps for breath all he could say was, “Slippery little buggars.”  I didn’t catch anything else all morning.  He didn’t stop chuckling all morning.  

On the way home, he offered this bit of advice (while still laughing at me): “You can’t squeeze a fish.”

Thanks, Barry.

It is a fair point, though.  There is a proper way to hold a fish so it isn’t harmed.  This is especially important if the fish is going to be released back into the lake.  Grasping a fish isn’t the proper technique.

Wisdom is like a fish.  It isn’t easily grasped.  In his encouragement to young courtiers of Israel’s royal household, Solomon makes this commentary:

Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked?  In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.  It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them. (Eccl. 7:13-14, 18 ESV)

“Take hold of this?”  Grasp this?  That’s a slippery fish.  What I’d really like to grasp is an understanding of why stuff happens, how to control what happens, and to have some voice into determining what will happen.  But all that is beyond me.  It is not only beyond my skill level, it is far beyond the stewardship God has give me (or any of us).  Shortly before Solomon made the above commentary, he cautioned, “God is in heaven, you are on earth - let your words be few” (Eccl. 5:2 ESV).  As much as I’d like to think I have control, and as much as I really want control, the reality is that God alone has that authority.  The slippery part of the fish is my realization and acceptation of that fact.

There is a significant qualifying statement in the last line of that first quote: “. . . for the one who fears God . . .”  This is, by definition, where wisdom begins.  Being skilled in life is the very purpose of wisdom and that wisdom starts by acknowledging that God is God, and we are not.  I know that.  I struggle to grasp that.  It is a slippery fish, indeed.

This is where faith comes in.  My natural instinct is to pursue autonomy and control.  I want to be the one to call the shots.  I’m really not qualified for that job description but that doesn’t prevent me from trying to fill the role.  If I fear God, if I am a person of faith, then I embrace both my dependence on God and my submission to His authority over every detail of life.  Or, as Solomon put it, the times of prosperity and the times of adversity.

This isn’t a blind resignation to the mystical energies of the universe.  This is a conscious choice to believe that God, in His infinite goodness and grace, is accomplishing the plan which will ultimately bring all things to their proper conclusion.  Truthfully, that is much harder to do than to write.  It is, in the words of my fishing buddy, a slippery little buggar.  

There is a proper way to grasp life.  It isn’t by seeking control.  We are competent for that.  It is by seeking the One who does have authority and thus control:  learning to grasp the hand of the God who made us (and slippery little fish).