It's amazing some of the things we can find when we go through our old junk. Some of it is just plan garbage but then there are things we find that are absolutely priceless. Like the hidden treasure I found yesterday in my dad's old fishing creel.
I was in Michigan last month, visiting my mother. She asked me to go through the garage and take whatever I wanted of my dad's stuff. So I grabbed his creel. My dad and I used to go fishing together. We each had a creel (the bag you carry the fish you caught in). Now I had two. I took it just to get it out of her garage.
Well, I picked it up today to put it someplace else and I felt something hard inside. "It better not be a fish!" I thought. Luckily is was just a small box, but what a box! It was my dad's fly-box. There were probably a couple hundred flies in there! Wet flies, dry flies, but they were all flies my dad had used.
As I looked through his fly collection I found one very special fly. Nothing eye catching by any means but it was a fly that I had made him years ago. How cool and yet somehow humbling. Useless to some, yet precious to me.
In the book of 2nd Kings there is a story about Josiah. He was 8 years old when he became king. He had someone go through HIS stuff and they found the Book of the Law. Hidden treasure! He read it and found out that he and his people had been living contrary to God's wishes all their lives. He immediately felt convicted and humbled himself before the Lord.
Repentance is an amazing thing. It is such a blessing to finally be doing what is right in God's eyes. It's a relief. Being forgiven, even punished for our sins, is worth it in the end, if we are doing what God desires for us to do.
Finding my dad's box of flies instantly took me back to the Middle Branch River in Michigan where my dad taught me how to fish. He was watching me when I caught my first fish. What a blessing it is to do what is right in our Father's eyes - both our earthly father's and our Heavenly Father's.
"19 Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I have spoken against this place and its people—that they would become a curse and be laid waste—and because you tore your robes and wept in my presence, I also have heard you, declares the Lord." - 2 Kinds 22:19
There is nothing like doing what is right, right there in front of your father. Hmm. Maybe it's time to go fishing again . . . and remember that simpler time, when everything was . . . well, it was perfect.
Fishing With Father - A River Runs Through It
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