1-19-23 - Follow the Leader

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here. 

Would you have gone, if Jesus walked by your place of work and said, “Follow me?” Would you have left your job, family, home on the promise of “I will make you fish for people?”

As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him."

There wasn’t any security in what Jesus was offering. And yet he said, “Follow me,” and people did. Immediately. How could they be so sure, that they were willing to go right then and there? Leave it all, no looking back.

Once I was praying, and had a sense of Jesus say, “Follow me.” I said, “Where are we going?” An answer came quickly: “You don’t get an itinerary. You don’t get the route. When I say, ‘Follow me,’ I just mean, ‘Follow me.’ Put your focus on where I am, not where I’m going.” In other words, follow the leader, not the path.

Maybe this should not have come as a revelation, but I had never thought of it that way. If you’re like me, you want to see what you’re committing to, what’s around the next corner. But it makes sense – Jesus invites us not to a walk-about, but to a relationship in which we are transformed and equipped to participate in God’s work of transforming others. In Christ, we are committing to a person, not a program. Kind of like a marriage… we don’t get much of a road map with those either, do we?

Here’s a prayer experiment: for the next week, let’s invite Jesus to lead us every day to the things and people he has blessed or intends to bless. And pray to be alive to that leading – which will mean checking in with him a few times during the day. You might set an alert on your phone or computer, or set up some regular times to stop and pray, “Where we going next, Lord?” And in the evening, take about five minutes to write down where you were led.

I commit myself to doing this. If you do, let me know if you’re surprised by anything. I believe Jesus says, “Follow me,” because he knows where we’re going. And there’s only one way for us to find out…

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are here. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.