Dear Friends,

Seven weeks passed from the Resurrection of Jesus to His Ascension into heaven. During this time,

‘He presented Himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over the course of forty days and speaking about the Kingdom of God.’ (Acts 1:3)

The final chapter of John’s Gospel relates how seven disciples were fishing from a boat, not far from the shore, when

‘Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.’ (John 21:4)

Jesus asked if they had caught any fish, but they hadn’t. In a scene reminiscent of the beginning of His ministry (Luke 5:1-11) Jesus told them to cast their nets over the right side, which they did, catching many fish.

Only then did they recognise Jesus. Peter immediately swam ashore, while the rest rowed the boat to the beach there.

‘Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three of them’ (John 21:11)

It may seem strange that John recorded how many fish there were, but the number is highly significant. At that time, it was believed there were 153 different types of fish in the Sea of Galilee. Amazingly, it seems the disciples had caught them all!

Looking back to the start of His ministry, Luke tells of Jesus helping Peter, and those with him, catch so many fish their nets almost burst, then saying,

‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’ (Luke 5:10b)

He spent the next three years teaching the disciples how to do just that. Then, after the resurrection, Jesus used this second miraculous catch to demonstrate the full scope of the Disciples’ task – to catch all people!

This is just what good teachers do today: they spend years teaching but, just before the exams, they stop teaching new things and concentrate on revising, and reinforcing what has been taught. Having spent three years teaching His disciples how to catch people, Jesus spent the 7 weeks between Resurrection and Ascension, revising and reinforcing those lessons before giving them their task:

‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations’ (Matthew 28:19a)

At the end of John’s Gospel, the disciples caught every type of fish – their next job (and ours) was to use what they had learned to teach everyone else about God. It makes me wonder, how can we play our part in this God-given task?

Many blessings,

Carl