Best Day

In this episode, I reflect on what makes a “best day” and the transformative power of encountering God. I share a personal anecdote about a delightful Monday spent in a mix of work and leisure, prompting me to ponder the essence of extraordinary days. Through the stories of Isaiah, Paul, and Simon Peter, I explore themes of vulnerability, surrender, and divine calling. I encourage listeners to respond to God’s invitation with openness and readiness, echoing Isaiah’s declaration, “Here I am, send me.” Embrace God’s love and discover the extraordinary in everyday moments.

00:00:00 What is being your best ever day? You know that day when everything just seemed to come together? You know really well. I mean, I often have pretty good days. Like even this last Monday was a pretty good day. It was a Monday. So theoretically, my day off and I actually took the day off, did a little bit of work running an errand. But then I had a really healthy, tasty kind of lunch. I went to a movie in town, and then I went for a walk in the the Lane Cove National Park. Some friends contacted me, and so I ended up going to their place and and hanging out with them over, over dinner. So it was a really simple, lovely, great day. But what are the things that actually make a day to be extraordinarily good? I mean, I know that there have been those days, you know, a day where I chose to love, the day where I chose to be vulnerable. To be brave a day, maybe.

00:01:07 When I took time to be in awe. On a bush walk. When I took time. To provide a shoulder to. Someone who was in need of. Of comfort. Or maybe it was a day. When I was able. Just to be. Caught up in the moment. In prayer. To be able to listen and to respond to God’s invitation. I can’t actually remember if there has been a day like that. You know, maybe there’s been just, you know, five minute little snatches along the time when I have been able to surrender myself. But one of the biblical principles is that it seems that when God looks at us, when God considers us, he doesn’t kind of take an amalgam of the good and the bad. It seems that he filters his experience of us through those wonderful, precious moments. The best of us. You know those days when we were able to give in love and we were able to. Surrender in vulnerability. We were able to open ourselves to his purpose and plan for us those really good days.

00:02:25 You know, when we look at the three different characters in our readings today, each of them are pondering that time when they experience God. Isaiah is just minding his own business. They’re doing a pretty dark and awful period in Jewish history, and there were plenty of those. But after the death of King Uzziah, it was a time of great darkness and distress, both in the still existing northern kingdom and in the southern kingdom of Judah, where Isaiah finds himself there in the temple and that incredible scene that he paints of the whole heaven kind of opening up and Isaiah being invited into the very presence of God. But he knows that’s unusual. And so Isaiah is first just overwhelmed by his sinfulness. And stay away from me, Lord, because I’m a sinful man might have even sinful tongue. My lips have spoken unclean things. And you know that sense that we often kind of have when we’re in the presence of God and the presence of goodness and the presence of love, that we can just be so overwhelmed by all of that experience.

00:03:44 What does the Lord do? He sends one of the seraphs to to come and to bring healing to Isaiah, to invite him. Even so, into this experience of encountering the living God we have full you know, when he was called, he was on his way to Damascus not to do anything good, But to persecute even more followers of the way. He’d already persecuted many. He’d put many into jail. Perhaps he’d even participated in the death of some of the followers of Jesus. He was certainly there at the. The martyrdom of Saint Stephen. So Paul is is not a poster child of of someone who has given themselves fully to God. But it’s in that moment when he is standing opposed to the way of God. The Lord calls him. The Lord invites him. The Lord brings him into that place of encountering him. And when in the gospel today, we’re invited into that scene of Jesus, you know, wanting to teach the crowd, but they’re pressing in so closely that there’s not room on the shore of the lake.

00:04:58 And note that in the Gospel of Luke, it’s always the lake. In the other Gospels, you’ll hear of the Sea of Galilee. Luke’s like, no, no, no. The sea is the Mediterranean. This is the lake anyway? And so there as I pressing in. Jesus sees one of the boats. And he calls to Simon to say. Hey, can I borrow your boat? Can I get into that just so that the crowd isn’t gonna overwhelm me as I preach and proclaim note? It doesn’t even seem that Simon and his companions are really paying attention to what’s going on at this stage. They’re not kind of avidly listening to Jesus. They’re just. They’re washing their nets, doing what needs to be done. And it happens to be that Jesus has invaded their space, the space that they normally occupy when they bring their boats back to shore. But in this moment, Jesus, then, as he finishes the teaching for that moment, turns to Simon and says, took him out, him, let us go.

00:05:54 Take the boat further out into the deep. Remember 25 years ago when we were turning the threshold of the new millennium, and we were all excited about that? And Pope John Paul II gave us that teaching, that invitation to embrace this new millennium, this new opportunity. That’s a time to bring joy in wonder, to proclaim the good news, to be a church that indeed goes out into the deep. And to Peter’s credit. He does it. He pushes the boat further out into the deeper waters. And then, even though he’s tired, presumably a bit grumpy at this stage, what does he say? But, master, we’ve worked hard all night long, and he’s an unusual fisherman because he acknowledges and admits we caught nothing. You know, it wasn’t this big. It wasn’t even bigger than that one. But we caught nothing. Even though we toiled all night long. But if you say so, I will pay out the nets for a catch. The speed of sound pretty excited at this point.

00:07:00 Is he thinking, yes, this is going to be this incredible miracle that’s going to happen? Is he looking forward to to seeing what God is doing? No. He doesn’t think anything at all is going to happen, because nighttime is the only time you ever catch fish in the Lake of Galilee. Yet he does it, he responds. He throws out the net for this catch, and the fish begin biting. Maybe Jesus is able just to see the movement in the water. He caught it as he looked over the surface of the lake. He knows where to head the boat to be able to to catch this shoal of fish, this huge skull of fish that has suddenly come in to the possibility of being caught in the net. And Simon, as he gestures to the others, to James and John in the other boat to come and to help him out, because there’s so many fish that the boat is being swamped. And even there the second boat is also being swamped. And then, of course, we don’t even know if Simon’s done anything worthwhile.

00:08:00 He hasn’t done any great things at this point in his life except for being a fisherman. And yet Jesus calls him. Jesus invites him, but Simon, all he’s aware of his failures, and so often that’s the case with us. We’re not aware of the things that we’ve done well. We’re not aware of those times when we have responded well. But Simon, like us, says, go away, you know. No, I can’t, because I am a sinner. I’m a sinful person. And what does Jesus say? Do not be afraid. He’s always inviting us into this response of freedom. The only place where we can find that freedom is when we surrender. When we give our hearts and our lives to the Lord. The Lord will do these incredible things. The Lord will begin to change us. And this is enough for Simon, for James, for John. They all decide this guy is someone that we need to follow. This guy is someone who will be able to lead us into the life that we truly want for ourselves.

00:09:12 And they leave everything and follow him. The following of Jesus. The following of that invitation always comes at a cost. To be a disciple, and to have never actually felt the pinch suggests that you’re not really a disciple of the Lord. To be a disciple means that we do need to to change our attitude. There is this transformation that is required of us that if we have been people that have lived in a very small, narrow world that is simply focused on my own goods and my own pleasures and my own desires, all of that will need to go to answer with the words of Isaiah does take a response from us. We need to be able to declare to the Lord. Here I am with empty hands. Here I am with all that I am with all of my weakness, with all of my failures. Here I am. Send me each of the. These characters know the reality of their lives, and yet they know the power of God. They know that that transformative power of love is able to change.

00:10:25 Even them. Even us. The God can do this work. The God can free us and call us into this space of goodness and freedom. So let’s indeed be people that respond with Isaiah’s great declaration. Here I am. Send me. No matter where we are, no matter what we’ve done, God will look at us and see that great day. That great five minutes in our lives when we’ve been able to say yes to him. Maybe it’s yet to come. Maybe that great moment will be tomorrow. Maybe it’ll be an opportunity when we can indeed surrender ourselves more fully and more faithfully and more completely to his will. But on that day, let’s indeed pray that we will respond with simplicity to say With Isaiah, here I am. Send me.