No doubt you’ve read or heard the story (Luke 5:4-5) in which Jesus directs the fishermen who had been out all night without catching anything to “push out a little deeper” into the sea and giving it another shot. If you’re like me, I have always tended to focus on how I imagine the bone-weary, up-doing-strenuous-labor-all-night men felt at hear Jesus’ instructions.

This morning, though, my attention was caught by two simple words: “push out”.

Push out. That phrase, to me at least, indicates the fishermen were going to have to extend considerable energy to overcome both their physical fatigue and the mental lethargy caused by the fact that “we just tried that all night long, it didn’t work, and we don’t know what else You expect us to do” thoughts that must surely have run across their minds.

But they obeyed Jesus. And we all know the rest of the story.

What about you and me? What is God telling us to do that requires us to, like the fishermen, ”push out into the deep” and try again even though we don’t know what in the world we can do that we haven’t tried before?

Maybe He’s commanding us to work on healing a fractured relationship . . . or use our God-given gifts & talents in some way . . . or finally gain control over the addiction we’ve unsuccessfully struggled with for so very long . . . OR . . .

Today is the day to heed Jesus’ command, to push out into the deep.