"The secret's out"

 

Yesterday I blanked. The surprising thing was less the fact that I blanked on a freezing cold day in January (we've all been there!) but that there were three other anglers on the lake, when it's usually extremely rare to see a single angler on the place. I was fishing at the lake known by a number of us Christian Anglers members (the photos that illustrate this piece show Christian Anglers members Pete and Roger with fish from the lake in question) rather cryptically as "the perch lake."

We've shared information among ourselves, but haven't ever named or publicised the water, because (truth be told) we've had some cracking fish from it, and at only a quarter of an acre we weren't keen for every perch fishing "Tom, Dick or Sally" to fish it to death- after all, a small pond can only take so much angling pressure before results drop away.

The puzzle as to why three (very earnest and professional looking) perch anglers were on the lake on Sunday - two of them also told me that they'd been fishing it the previous day, too) was answered today in a message from a friend. "They featured the lake in last week's Angling Times" he reported. Good news, no doubt, for the lake's owners, less so perhaps for those of us who were already "in the know."

All of which made me think about evangelism. (no, really, it did!) It's very understandable that anglers would want to keep their best locations secret (after all why should everyone else benefit from their hours of research?), but are we sometimes if not too secretive, certainly too "shy" to talk to others about our faith in Jesus?

There are various reasons we might be reticent. Fear of being laughed at. Fear of people thinking we're "holier than thou." Fear of not knowing the answers to the questions they have. Most of the fears, in my experience, turn out to be unfounded, and the simple fact is that Jesus himself does tell us to "go and make disciples of all people." (Matthew 28)

Some of the best examples of people sharing their faith in the Bible come not from religious experts (in fact, they're often the guys who get it wrong!) but from very ordinary folk. There's the Samaritan "Woman at the Well" in John Chapter 4 who has had a pretty colourful past (and then some!) who simply says to all her friends "come and meet a man who told me everything about myself", or there's the example of Philip in Chapter 1 of John's Gospel who says to Nathaniel "come and meet the Messiah." No long theological lectures, no clever sermons or sales pitch- in both cases they just offer an invitation to "come and meet Jesus."

It's a pity that the secret of our perch lake has got out there, but it's an even bigger pity when we keep the message of salvation to ourselves. Why not make 2021 a year when we take hold of the opportunities to invite people to meet Jesus.