“Forks in the Pool”
By Rick Stevens, Fiat Ventures
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
A friend of mine was telling me about how he used to work at a Boy Scout summer camp. As you might guess the scouts played plenty of pranks on each other…and on the camp staff. One morning the pool director woke up to find that in the middle of the night, a group of scouts had apparently snuck into the dining hall, stolen all of the knives, forks, and spoons, and dumped them into the pool.
Ten minutes later, there were 25 staff guys in the pool trying to grab the thousands of missing utensils. Getting them out of the deep end was a pain, but it was easy enough in the shallow end.
Even if you’re not fishing for silverware, it’s easier to swim in the shallow end where you don’t have to tread water. This actually goes for people too – it’s easier to be shallow than to be deep.
Have you ever had a friend call you out for being a shallow person? I’m sure you can think of somebody you think is shallow. Maybe they are so consumed with their looks or their clothes that they just don’t seem to have any “depth” to them. People can be shallow about a lot of different things. Maybe they judge others on their athletic ability, how much money their parents make, how good their grades are, or what colleges they’ve been accepted to.
Nobody wants to be a shallow person, so we shouldn’t want to have a shallow faith. In this Sunday’s Gospel reading, we find Peter and the other disciples fishing in shallow water and not having any luck. Then Jesus tells them to put out into deep water and they catch so many fish that their nets almost tear! The lesson here is that if we remain shallow in our faith, we’ll come up empty, and that we should strive to have a deep faith.
Deep faith isn’t always something that comes easy. Especially with the demands of school, homework, activities, sports, jobs, chores, and everything else. We have to make a special effort to deepen our faith. We have to put in the time and commit to working on our friendship with God and living out the Christian life. And like the disciples found when they put out into the deep, it’s completely worth it.
