When we Iived in Panama we would go deep fishing at the Pearl Islands. On each of our six trips that lasted for a week at time I had many occasion watching the catch. At times it seemed like the fish had gone into the deepest part of the ocean as it sounded. The fishing pole would bend so much that I thought for sure it was goin to break but it never did as that fish evidently stopped fighting the constant pull. This background played an instrumental part in my writing “The Great Fisherman”

He drew me out of many waters. He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. Psalm 18:16

It was the mercy of God that rescued me from myself. What a compassionate and intimate Jesus, you are. You were as a fisherman, fishing for me. I had bit the line, but the world lengthened the line so far out that it almost came to the end of the reel, but not quite. I knew I was now helpless with nowhere else I could go with this taut line. My self–freedom was at peril now, but I felt a gentle pull in on the line, slowly reeling me in from the deep. Upward, I could see a faint glimmer of light as I struggled in the cold darkness. The reeling continued, and I wanted now to be drawn from the depths that I had lingered in for so long. I didn’t realize that there was Light above, a brilliance that warmed my almost frozen body. It was a reality that I had never known to have existed. The drawing continued, but I was not fighting it, instead, I was swimming as fast as I could. Oh, to see the face of the fisherman, who, apparently loved me so much that He drew me from the darkness where I had lived, into the Light. Now, I must go back into those deep, dark, waters, and draw those who are unaware, like I was, and bring them into the light, into the countenance of the Great Fisherman.

5/29/23  Lou Womack