Surrender

 Every year BFA picks a theme that will guide much of the spiritual conversations, especially in Chapel and the Middle School youth group and each school's Spiritual Emphasis Week. This year, I got to sit in on the selection process in the spring and watched the team come to the word "Surrender" pretty early and unanimously. As Middle School Chaplain, it's been my task to help unpack this word in Scripture for the Middle School kids.

I was drawn pretty early to the rich young Ruler in Matthew 19, so I highlighted his story in my first chapel. The students helped me make a list of all the things he would have had to surrender if he had decided to follow Jesus. Their list was more extensive than I imagined: possession, influence, reputation, freedom, and authority were all near the top. The next week, I jumped over the story of Peter's first encounter with Jesus in Luke 5. We came up with a really similar list, but the part that stuck with me the most was a small detail I don't know if I'd noticed before.

When Luke first mentions Peter and the other fisherman in verse 2, we seem them performing an action: washing their nets. From a college class, I remembered that washing the nets also meant repairing and cleaning and ensuring that they were ready to be used again the next night. It was actually an arduous process and really integral. Because if you think of a fisherman's tools in 1st century Galilee, boats were nice, but nets were essential. This was Peter's true source of income. So when Jesus asks him in verse 4 to try fishing again, we see Peter's initial response was "We already tried all night long and didn't catch anything," but I wondered if the underlying thoughts were screaming things like "Are you serious? I just finished washing and fixing the nets. I'll have to do that again. We went at it all night, and I'm tired. If I have to stay to wash the nets again, it'll be at least 3 more hours until I get some sleep!"

For Peter to hardly pause and to continue on with "But at your word, I will let down the nets" speaks to me of a surrender I feel I have yet to learn. No hesitation. No negotiation. Willing to count a cost. That's what I want for myself and my students. Not to just anything or anybody, but toward our Savior.

First day of being MS Chaplain