Control and Emptiness

Decade Control and Emptiness

I recently watched a docu-drama about a criminal underworld mastermind recounting his life story before he died. He tells his would-be biographer, “I decided long ago that life was a game, and I was going to live in such a way so as to be the one who controls it.” He thought that controlling his own life through his own will instead of God’s would produce greater fulfillment.  The movie ends with the gangster, alone, broke, battling cancer, and weeping over a dying, crippled son he couldn’t cure or restore. The master-mind of the mob controlled nothing and ended up empty. This typifies our own modern age: we think life is a game that we can control without God. Only too late do we figure out that this leads to emptiness, and that the only game is the one we tell ourselves when we refuse to serve God.

In today’s Gospel, when Jesus tells Peter to send his boat out into the deep, Peter responds, “Lord, we have toiled all night and have caught nothing.” Peter fished the Sea of Galilee his entire life; he knew every shoal and sandbar. He trusted his knowledge, his skills and his efforts. In other words, Peter believed he was in control, but his nets were empty. But when he obeyed, his sense of self-control and therefore life, changed. He lowered his nets, and hauled in so many fish, his nets were tearing (cf. Lk 5: 1-11). 

The profitable discovery of obeying the Lord leads Peter and the other future apostles to leave everything to come and follow Jesus. What are you willing to leave to cooperate with His word? Today, fast from one thing you think you can’t live without: snacking, alcohol, internet, judging others, etc. to follow Jesus more closely and so ask Him to fill your net.