When was the last time you were in the Word and read something you’d never noticed before? What did you see? I love those moments and receive them joyously startled, with the wonder and perplexity of a child watching a magician work a trick. Maybe he pulls a bunny from a hat or makes a coin or card appear out of thin air. My delighted response to Holy Spirit revealing something new is inevitably the same: Where did that come from?!
When he had finished speaking, Jesus said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”
Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”
Luke 5:4-5
I love the word deep. It reminds me of other words I love, words like wild and holy and wonder and vast, words that lift your gaze and expand your lungs and sense of the impossible, words like heartbeat and thunder that resonate humming rhythmic in your core, full words like laughter and promise and hope, weighty words that grab hold of the height and width and length of this brief precious life and wrestle it to the page. Good. True. Noble. Lovely. Deep. Deep reminds me of the oceanic bigness of God’s grace and embrace. It reminds me of His invitations to excavate our souls, to rest, to be opened to coaxing more than sixty clipped logical seconds from each minute by becoming radically present and unhurried—and by so doing live the eternal life in the now, swimming against the culture’s current to move on to the next.
Still, I somehow missed Jesus’ invitation to Simon and us: “Put out into deep water.” He Himself is a deep well (John 4), His Spirit is deep water, and we are promised a catch if we obey His Word (“because You say so”) and cast our nets. He will be found!
I also love that Simon couldn’t resist explaining that his fish problem wasn’t due to his lack of effort. Can you relate to that? Doing things in our own timing or way and running ahead of God instead of waiting for His command? Yet, then I imagine Peter had gotten a night full of sleep rather than frustration—and wonder if his heart would have been open in the same way to conviction and revelation. Perhaps, Jesus used even Peter’s willfulness to set him up for formation and freedom. Nothing is wasted!
By way of a conclusion, I invite you to explore the endless mystery of the Person of Jesus with this prompt. Psalms 42 and 43 (originally one psalm) together contain a section each of the past, present, and future tenses, and each ends with an examination of the Psalmist’s inner state (“Why are you downcast, O my soul?”) and a resolution to meet with God in that state (“Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him”). Our favorite deep verse lives right in the center, in the—you guessed it—present tense section. So wherever you find yourself, pause and listen. The present moment is the only one where people and God coexist, the only one where we can meet together. What’s going on beneath the noise and distraction? What deep things in you are yearning to be brought before God? What deep things of God echo in the far reaches of your soul?
Deep calls to deep.
Psalm 42:7
Fire and Whisper 