Fishing Weather

With the weather here in Georgia slowly turning brisker and the trees on the verge of bursting into wild splashes of their autumn colors, my family and I have been going fishing lately. 

My dad, my mom, my sister, my brother-in-law... they love baiting their hooks, casting their lines off of the dock, and... waiting. Me? I just learned how to cast a line Sunday afternoon and learned that fishing with worms means fishing with LIVE worms that wiggle and spasm. (Eww! Eww! Keep him away!) While the fishing itself is fun and I like casting the line, I find the most pleasure in watching. So I sit eating my supply of snacks, typing on my iPhone bursts of writer inspiration, making my rounds to check on everyone's success, falling in love with the cute little turtles that peek their heads up for air, and snapping pictures with my iPhone. And reflecting. I spend a lot of time leaning on the dock railing, enjoying the solitude and gazing aimlessly across the lake, watching the ebb and flow the wind brings as it plays along the surface of the waves. And I listen. 

Because there's something glorious about being surrounded by God's masterpiece of nature. There's something about seeing His fingerprints everywhere, about feeling His presence in the stillness and serenity that makes me feel closer to Him. And it's in those moments of quieting my spirit and silencing my thoughts that He whispers to my heart. 

Sunday afternoon was no different. 

I consider myself to be a fairly patient person. I mean, I work with children, I offer advice and encouragement and understanding to people and their problems, and I worked with horses for four and a half years riding and training them. But that afternoon, the Lord spoke to me that there are different kinds of patience. 

I'm a patient person, but I'm patient when I'm doing something. When I'm keeping busy, keeping my mind distracted, keeping my hands moving to pass the time. When I'm watching children or training a horse or counseling a friend. When I'm doing something to stay occupied, I'm good at patience. 

But that isn't the only kind of patience that God requires from us. At times, He requires from us something more. The patience of silent waiting. 

Ever since I was a little girl, I've struggled with fishing. I could never keep my Snoopy bobber in the water long enough to catch anything. Because fishing requires this kind of patience that I'm not very good at. When you've cast your line and you're standing there on the dock with your rod in hand, watching your bobber rise and fall with the gentle waves of the water... you aren't keeping busy. You're silently waiting. And waiting requires patience. 

The Lord leads us into waiting seasons of our lives when we need to learn this kind of patience. When we need to learn to slow down and quiet ourselves. And in our fast-paced world, that can be a difficult thing to do. Because so many of us lack this kind of patience. 

In Psalms 46:10, the Lord instructs us to be still and know that He is God, and the Psalmist counsels us to "be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him..." (Psalms 37:7) But so often in the seasons of our lives and in our prayer life, we forget the instruction to "be still." 

We can be the most patient people in the world but unless we've learned how to quiet ourselves and be patient in the stillness of waiting on the Lord, we've yet to learn the greatest key to patience and contentment in the waiting.