"This one's a keeper ..."

Back in 2013 I enjoyed one of the biggest adventures of my life. I drove around the Southern States of America and hung out with different groups of Christian anglers, hunters and general outdoors people. Starting in Georgia I drove to South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas. It was a blast.

Most of my fishing was done in enormous lakes, either from a high powered bass boat or wading into the warm water and casting, but my first experience of angling US style was in Charleston, SC and was fishing off the end of a pontoon in the ocean.

My guide was Susan Dalton of Angling Women and Old Bridge Outfitters , mad keen angler and member of a large Presbyterian church in Charleston and under her tutelage I caught a skate and the flounder shown in the picture above. The skate was returned to the water, but the flounder caused a different kind of excitement. A tape measure was produced, the size of the fish noted and the pronouncement made: "it's a keeper."

That same afternoon Susan's father, Booker Dalton, filleted and cooked the most delicious fish I've ever tasted. From sea to plate in about an hour.

One of the great assurances of the Christian life is that when someone places their life into God's hand He makes the same pronouncement: "this one's a keeper." Whatever ups and downs life throws at us, this much is certain: God won't let go of us. Jesus is recorded in John's Gospel (Chapter 10:28) as saying of His followers "I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No-one can ever snatch them from my hand."

I've lost a lot of fish over the years (I lost a perch of about a pound and a half at the net yesterday!), but the Christian certainty is that through all the changing scenes of life, God will never lose His loving grip on us.