Its not the Knot

Way back in the day, what seems to have been another life, I used to really enjoy fishing. I was never a true fishing addict but I did carry a fishing pole in my truck. If I passed an interesting looking pond or lake during the day and time permitted I would find a way to make a few casts at lunch time or before heading home at the end of the day.

Back in “those days” I did my best to keep abreast of the latest cool fishing knot. For the nonfisher-persons reading this….. There seems to be a never ending stream of the latest “best” knot to use to tie your lore or hook to your state of the art fishing line. After a hard day of fishing, freshwater anglers will disagree and debate over the best knot. However, when subject of best knots comes up among saltwater anglers you would do well to back out of the bar, quickly. Their passion for the knot runs a bit deeper.

I was reminded of this just a couple weeks ago while taking my dear friend Andrew McMillan for an evening sail and troll across the bay, www.fepaisa.com. Andrew and his family were back in the USA for a bit of R&R (for a missionary a vacation = preaching and raising support). Andrew noticed, after catching a nice little blue fish, that the spinning rod I had quickly thrown together did not have a swivel on the line and therefore the line was twisting. This is inexcusable for a real fisherman. Andrew is a real fisherman. I quickly cut off the silver spoon and tied in a snap swivel using a Double-Figure-Eight- Loop knot. **This is not a very elegant knot. However, it is very quick to tie and it makes adding or removing tackle a snap. **

Andrew, seeing the knot I used, commented, in a very knw way, that he had never seen anyone tie fishing line like that before. Remember Andrew is a real fisherman. I explained to him that I was shown this very simple and quick knot by the deck hand on a fishing charter I had been on a few years back. The deck hand knew all the “proper” knots but chose this knot because it was fast and easy and “more then strong enough”, in his words, for anything we might catch. Plus it allowed him to rig and un-rig a dozen or so fishing rigs at the start or completion of a day in a fraction of the time it would take using the “real fishing knots”.

This past Saturday I had promised our grandson, Christian who was spending the weekend with us that we would go fishing. More pressing needs had to be attended to and the fishing did not happen as planned. A promise is a promise, the scheduled work was postponed and we went today. Late this morning we shoved off and in about three hours we caught 9 flounder and 3 sharks. Christian had a ball.

Today as I sat on the dock straightening out the fishing gear I noticed a very fancy knot on a flounder rig that was in my Dad’s tackle box. I assumed it must have been tied by my father, Dad is also a “real fisherman”. Tangled up next to the real fishing knot was my trusty, but unassuming, double-figure-eight-loop knot. The knot my Dad had tied really looked sharp. It had a commending presence that said “HAY! I AM A REAL FISHERMAN”. My knot was,, well, just a knot.
While comparing the knots it occurred to me that the two flounder I had just filleted didn’t have a clue what kind of knot was used to drag them to my dinner table. The same applies to my grandson and wife. They neither knew nor cared what kind of knot I had used to tie their hook to the fishing line. All they knew was that there was a fish on the hook and when they reeled the line in the fish came along.

Then, as you might expect, the Holy Spirit used these simple knots to make His point.

Like fisherman, we (those professing to be Christians), all too often become caught up in what kind of knot we use. Obviously, I am no longer talking about knots. What I am referring to, and what the Lord was pointing out to me, is that I (we) get caught up in the way we were taught it should be done or how we think it should be done.

For reasons I don’t care to go into now I have had the privilege to attend many different churches, with many different forms of worship. It’s easy for me to find “things” to point out that “they” are doing wrong. The choir sings too much or not enough, the songs the congregation sings are too fast or too slow. The preacher reads his notes too much or he is too much off the cuff, he is too emotional, or there isn’t enough emotion. “I” think they should do an alter call,,,, too much emphasis on this or that. Bla- Bla- Bla- Bla-----------.

Its all just knots. What makes a fisherman, a fisherman, is that he fishes, Its not what kind of knot he uses. When the day is over……………………………, How many fish did you catch?