[This is one in a series of mid-week Reflections published by Horley Baptist Church during December 2020]
A few days ago, when I started to think about this reflection, I discovered that we had no internet connection. In the context of these reflections, it meant that I did not have access to the online tools that often help with their preparation. Having said that, there was something strangely satisfying in picking up a well-worn but somewhat dusty Bible, and reading the text as St Paul wrote it! Maybe we should do it more often.
It transpired that a couple of ‘entrepreneurs’ had thought that the copper core from 400 metres of cable could provide a nice Christmas bonus. To their disappointment, and the disruption of service to a substantial area of the county, the cable was a fibre-optic one and had no value beyond its intended purpose.
Of course, the value of that cable was not in its physical structure but in its function. Especially in this year of ‘online this, that and the other’, the significance of the missing link becomes painfully apparent. The data that it carries are used by emergency services, hospitals, clinics, and many public bodies, not to mention students studying online and the many people working remotely.
In Luke chapter 5 we read that Simon the fisherman and his partners had a problem with their net connections. After an unproductive night without a catch, his encounter with Jesus resulted in there being so many fish that their nets began to break. Not only that, but their boats began to sink. By compromising the tools of their trade, was Jesus indicating that that phase of their lives was over?
Like those fishermen of old who depended on their nets, many people today depend on a different form of net. We have become to rely on it in ways that just a year ago might have been regarded as science fiction. A short interruption can have life-changing consequences.
Would an encounter with Jesus challenge your lifestyle? Are you afraid of the consequences? Simon and his colleagues accepted the challenge that Jesus gave them; He changed them and then they went on to change the world.
Fancy a challenge? He is online right now.
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Contributed by Steve Humphreys; © the Author
