Cormorants

To catch fish with a cormorant you have to train the birds. Chinese fishermen have done this for a long time. These birds really love fish. In order for them not to eat all the fish they catch you tie a small grass circle around their necks, not too tight, and you let them dive overboard. This way they catch the fish but cannot fully swallow them. Many use a cord to pull the bird back in the boat when they have a fish. Then you squeeze the neck gently and the fish pops out and you send the bird again out to fish. When you have what you need you untie the string and let the birds get their own food until they are full. Some of these birds live 20 years working for one fisherman.


Now what in the world will this information do for you today? Well I think sometimes we feel like we are these birds. We go out after something important and we may get a hint of it but we can't swallow it. We are never satisfied.
Perhaps in our faith life this could be seen that we go and find the truth and the peace and the hope and the grace of God ... but we don't swallow it. We spit it out before it can nourish us. Then we go out again and again. We find the Word in the worship but we walk out of the sanctuary and begin to bicker with someone just outside the door. We promise to be generous but we hoard all we can. We feel God's love but we depend more on what WE can do and how WE can control all those things around us. We want our fill... but we refuse to swallow. Or perhaps, and this is probably stretching the point, we are ok with just a taste of the Good News and are fearful that if we truly taste it, then everything will change.

What shall we do?

Untie the rope.
what? untie anything that blocks your ability to fully take in the love of God that Jesus teaches us. Untie anything that keeps you from living with the nourishment of the Holy Spirit. Loose the bounds of the world and trust...that where you are taken by God's love will be a place of incredible grace and joy.

What do you think?
God abides
Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2009