Rest as Worship: Fishing and My Soul

An article by Matt    1 Comment

Growing up, fishing annoyed me.  I was never a patient kid, I always wanted to be doing something… but fishing involved a great deal of waiting.  What I wanted to be doing was catching.

Fast forward a couple of decades and the vacation that I most look forward to every year involves a great deal of fishing.  I have come to cherish the time spent standing and waiting and, to be honest, there are times that I prefer that to the catching.

As I stand there, staring out into the vast unknown that is the Atlantic Ocean, feeling the sand between my toes, hearing the crash of waves around me, tasting the salt in the air, and drinking in the smells of the beach I am immersed in the creation that God has entrusted us with.  Standing there, knee deep in the surf, echoes of scripture run through my head followed by snippets of worship songs… and I find myself in awe of how it all comes together here, where the land meets the vastness of the oceans.

It is places like this where I have the space to dive deep into the recesses of my heart and really assess my spiritual health.  In the stillness of the beach, I am able to let my concerns about work, family situations, and finances drift away and really meditate on my relationship with my creator.  Sometimes this is a time of celebration, other times it is a time of realizing that something is missing… it is, however, always a joyful time.

My prayer for all of us is that we will make the room necessary in our lives to intentionally be still before our God.  As we enter into one of the most hectic and stressful seasons of the year, I am convinced that the only way to maintain our sanity, and any degree of spiritual health, is by taking the time to reconnect.

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