Grace in Failure

On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. (Luke 5:1-6 ESV). Yesterday I wrote a bit about grace in forgetting the past. I mentioned it was equally important to forget our failures and successes. Today’s reading helps us to dig a little deeper concerning the pain and difficulty of failure. Perhaps you have been the student who studies all night and still fails the exam; or, the salesperson who doubles their sales calls and still doesn’t make quota; or, the cancer patient who undergoes a rigorous program of chemotherapy only to discover, six months later, that the disease is back worse than before. Sometimes, like the disciples, we toil all night and have nothing to show for it. It would be easy to classify each of these as failures. However, when we read our text today we see that the failure led to a great success. In the midst of our frustration it is often not the extraordinary, but the ordinary transformed, that brings results. Jesus tells Simon to do once more what he’s been doing all night without success. “If you say so,” says Simon. The nets are let down yet again, and what a catch! “They caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.” The point of the story is not that Jesus was with Simon in his success. The point is that Jesus was with Simon in his failure. If God is with us only in moments of success, then God is not with us very often, for most of us are more familiar with failure than with success. The good news is that God is with us when we toil all night and have nothing to show for it.

Believing this does not mean we will overcome failure. It means that failure will not overcome us. Henry Ford understood this principle well. These days, Henry Ford is a household name, but it hasn’t always been that way. At 23, Ford was just a machinist’s apprentice with big aspirations. A few years later, he was known as an intelligent, yet failed engineer who just couldn’t produce. But it was these early failures that taught him valuable lessons and sparked his future success. He never gave up the concept of beginning again, nor should we. We have the Lord of creation who partners with us in every task of our lives. If you have failed, consider it an opportunity to merely cast your nets again! God may have plans for a full net this time!