Article November 5, 1979 Issue

A job offer

CAROLYN F. RUFFIN

Assume you have a good job. You enjoy the work—you are with friends, work outdoors, and make a reasonably prosperous living. Then someone comes along and makes a startling job offer. He asks your friends and you to give all this up: "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."^{Matt. 4:19;}

The story is familiar—Christ Jesus asking Peter and Andrew to become his disciples. But think about it; how would you have responded if you were those fishermen? It must have seemed at first that Jesus was asking them to leave a certain amount of financial stability for an uncertain livelihood, to drop the trade they knew for a risky new venture, to stop spending their time providing for themselves, and work instead to help others. And for what reward? An intangible something called "the kingdom of heaven"!

Before Peter came to join Jesus, Luke tells us that the Master had been standing in Peter's ship teaching a crowd on the shore. Peter and his fishing partners had had a bad night with the nets. When Jesus finished teaching, he told the men to go out into the lake and again fish. They went out and made quite a haul. They were astonished.^{See Luke 5:1–11;}

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