A Fishing Tale

I recall fishing with my father and grandfather when I was a kid, maybe 10 years old or so.

My grandfather, my mother’s father, was always trying to show us kids that my Dad did not really get it, and so when we were fishing said he was going to teach me to cast, that the way my Dad had taught me was all wrong. So he took my rod, leaned way back, and made a huge overhand cast.

The line did not go very far, because he had left the drag on, and to my grandfather’s chagrin (and probably my Dad’s delight)  the rod followed the line right over the side and down to the bottom of the bay.

Well, we kept on fishing, me using my Dad’s rod, until finally I got a huge tug on the line. We were fishing for flounder, and as I am tugging on the line I am thinking that this had to be the biggest one ever, and when I pulled the line in, I saw I had a flounder on one of the two hooks of the flounder rig.

But the other hook had snagged on a line – and when we pulled that line in, there was my rod! And when we pulled its line in, I had 2 flounder on that one!

I take this is a metaphor of the life of giving. We share what we have, we cast our bread on the waters, and miraculously we find that the rewards are far greater than the cost, that what we get back far exceeds what we had put in.