Reflections From Sunday Evening

This week I read a book titled "The Shark and the Goldfish" by Jon Gordon. It is a brief parable with a simple message. A goldfish is accustomed to swimming in a controlled setting and having someone come along and feed them each day. If you live in a fishbowl it is secure, safe but very confined. However if you don't know you are confined, does it really matter? Anyway one day this goldfish finds itself out of the fishbowl and in the ocean.

He meets a very friendly shark. (Most sharks are very kind - it's just those rogue sharks in movies like "Jaws" that give them a bad name.) A shark is different from a goldfish. They live in the vast ocean. Each day they set out and find their food. The options are much greater. The effort is also greater.

The good news is that the shark is able to teach the goldfish to find its own food in the vast ocean. Suddenly the world has expanded and the options are huge.

The book's audience is business. But it has a word for the church. For so long we (in the church) have been accustomed to living in the fishbowl. We are like the goldfish. We have a comfortable setting. We are used to having enough people come along and keep us going. (That is like the goldfish being fed each day.) So in essence we swim around in our confined area and do what we are most accustomed to doing.

That may have been the way things worked for a long time - but no longer. We may still be in our confined fishbowl but nobody is coming along feeding us any longer. It would be good if we became sharks. (The nice, kind type of course.) We could develop a self-understanding of Christians living in the vast ocean with unlimited possibilities of reaching new people.

If any of us still think we are goldfish we should probably think again. That is not our reality. The sooner we grasp the good news that we live in a vastly different place (ocean) and get out and search for others each day the sooner we will discover the freedom of being a kind, gracious shark.

Certainly the parable breaks down - all illustrations do. But the day has come for us to leave the comfort of the fishbowl and head to the vast ocean that is filled with people who need Christ.

It's been a good day. I hope you've had a good day too.

Blessings.