Fishing Below the Dam
Notes on Fishing for Men
“Hunger is an open door.”
As a boy, my uncle took me to fish below a hydroelectric dam on the Mississippi River. I still remember feeling small at the base of that enormous structure. We tied up directly over the discharge tube from one of the turbines — the place where the river was forced through the machinery and shot out the other side. Everything churned up by the turbines — organic matter, small fish, whatever the river was carrying — came out of that tube in pieces. It was like a free buffet. The fish were stacked up fighting the current just to stay near the source.
That day I could see them rolling at the surface. I would have caught more with a net than a hook.
For us fishers of men, I want you to look past the feeding frenzy and focus on the appetite. There are moments in every person’s life when hunger for God and His Word is real and acute. Some are tied to the calendar — Christmas and Easter, when spiritual themes invade even the most secular environments. Some are triggered by life events: the birth of a child, a serious diagnosis, a lost job, a broken marriage, a bankruptcy.
But the most universal hunger-trigger is death. The loss of someone we love does more than bring grief. It opens questions. Questions about what comes next, about our own mortality, about whether God is real and whether He is good and whether we’ve been good enough. It fills the mind with regret and urgency in a way that nothing else quite does.
The opportunity in those moments is not to be an ambulance chaser. It’s not to haunt funeral homes with a Gospel tract. It’s to be extraordinarily present, patient, and human.
Don’t push. Don’t offer Christian platitudes and slap a happy sticker on it. Don’t rush to answers. Hold them. Listen to them. Cry with them. Process with them. Ask more questions than you answer. Listen not to reply but to understand. Trust the Holy Spirit to give you the opportunity and the words when the time is right — and know that the right time may be a long time later.
Hunger is an open door. Don’t force it. Walk through it slowly, with both hands full of grace. - This is The Way
Here’s the link to the entire series:
https://www.thisistheway.live/t/fishing-proverbs