Never too old

-

Last night I saw Mark Knopfler at the Resorts World Arena (formerly NEC) in Birmingham. He's 69 (many in the audience were older) but, in the words of one of his songs, "the boy can play." Still loving what he's doing, and a whole lot better at it than when he was a young kid just starting out.

Many of the best fishermen I've known have been "tapping on a bit." I'm certainly a better angler now than I was when I was 13. Although I had all the enthusiasm back then, I was impatient: I'd move swims too quickly, plumb the depth too hurriedly, race to the first available swim. Time and experience have made me if not a good angler certainly a better one.

It should be the same in our Christian journey, too. That as time passes, we grow. That our experiences drawn from Bible reading, church, the wisdom of other Christians and - above all- our lived relationship with Jesus should lead to us becoming more effective as followers and disciples. One of the joys of being a Christian is that there's no "retirement age"; no "scrapheap." There are a couple of older Christians in the church I'm at (and remember, I'm in my 50's, so we are talkig proper old) who I find inspirational. They may have aches and pains and be less nimble on their feet than they once were, but they're still always first to be at the prayer meeting, and have so much to teach and to pass on to younger believers.

I've known some great older anglers in my life, and some great Christians who've reached the "veteran" stage, and one day when I'm really old and grizzled I hope myself to be both of those things. Still fishing. Still serving God. Still learning.
Like someone once said to me: "no-one graduates from Bible study till they meet the Author face to face."


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"This one's a keeper ..."

-
Image
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 mad
Read more

On fishing for people

-
Image
The T-shirt I'm wearing in the photo above is one of my favourites. Made for me, and given to me, by my pal David (he's the big guy next to me) when I was visiting him in the USA in 2013, it bears the legend "Go Fish", followed by the reference from Luke's Gospel that records Jesus' famous words as he called his first disciples to leave their life of commercial fishing and follow him on an adventure of evangelism.  I (like Izaak Walton) have always rather liked the fact that it was to fishing that Jesus turned when he wanted to call and commission his first followers, but a fellow member of Christian Anglers made me stop and think a couple of weeks ago when we were talking over a pint.  He'd always slightly struggled to come to terms with Jesus' "evangelism as fishing" metaphor, because, as my friend pointed out, fishing is all about deception - tricking a fish into thinking something with a hook in it is natural food, and shar
Read more

Tales of the unexpected

-
Image
My first fishing trip of this year, made in the company of two other Christian Anglers members, was with specimen perch as the intended target. The specimen perch aspiration was a realistic one, as the pond concerned was one from which all three of us have landed out-sized perch and where, although the fishing is never easy, normally at least one of the party lands a stripey, spiky fish that merits weighing and a quick "grip and grin" for the camera. However, this time round the only perch we caught were miniscule, and the fish we predominantly caught were roach, almost all in the six ounce to three quarters of a pound size range. Now, don't get me wrong, they were handsome fish, silver hued like something from a jeweller's window and good fun to catch, but they weren't what we expected or had ventured to the lake in search of. Reflecting afterwards, I thought about how that fishing trip was, in a sense, a microcosm of life itself. So often what happen
Read more