Now that’s a powerful word-picture I will not soon forget. Thank you, Father and Natalia for words I needed to hear and reminding me of something I really need to think about—-and do.

Even if a person flies in a baloon, and experiences some problems, he immediately starts getting rid of ballast. This is the only way to het higher, and in some cases – the only way not to perish…But we often act in a strange way. We often experience problems & hardships in our life, and we often realise what causes them, but we refuse to get rid of our dead weight of our passions, material & mental property, our belongings. Though even K.S.Lewis wrote in one of his writings that our claim for own property sounds equally ridiculous both in paradise & in hell… Especially we, Chrishtans, know that here on this earth nothing belongs to us, even St Apostle said that we come here naked, and naked we leave this world. But we continue to clutch at what we consider “ours”, to the extent, that even in minutes of great danger we do not want to let it go, we are reluctant to leave even a small belonging, though we realise that it may theaten to our soul. We thus seek cpmpromises, and if we get used to them, the compromise may become the only way of our life, and we become unable to change anything, as our readiness to follow Christ is weakened under the cargo of our multiple nets – which we ourselves braid for us, with the assistance of the enemy. It does not matter much I think whether our nets are wide, rich or spacious. Our attachment to them & our habit of compromising is what really matters. And may destroy us.
I often think that I live in a shell. It presses me, makes me unable to breathe, parts me from freedom in Christ, but the more I live the more I cherish it, and feel apprehensive to leave it, even knowing that I’ll only benefit from this freedom spiritually.
Our net is like a suitcase without a handle – it’s heavy to carry it, and at the same time it’s pitifully to throw it away…

I do wish to follow Him but can I not just roll up my net, tie it to my back and carry it with me–just in case He might need it? I mean, might He not get hungry and need someone to catch fish for Him? What if *I* get hungry?

Actually, hauling my heavy, smelly, ‘holey’ net around with me as I try to follow Him hasn’t worked out very well for me. It has encumbered me and exhausted me. And besides, He hasn’t needed it and, I realize now, I don’t need it. He doesn’t need my pathetic net to satisfy hungry people (including me). He is the one who feeds 5000 with just two fishes and the one who calls multitudes of fish out the depths of the sea into empty nets.

Father, Bless,

Deborah