They were minding their business, going about their daily duties, unaware that the King of the Ages, the Son of Glory, their Messiah was about to walk past –fisherman, preparing their nets to cast into the lake, working the boats, simply doing their daily chores. Then Jesus called, “Come, follow me.” [Matthew 4:18-22]
Peter and his brother Andrew, James and his brother John, four men totally unaware of the change that was about to happen, heard the call of the Savior . . . “Come, follow me” and they responded.
Later, others would hear the call. Levi, the hated tax collector would hear and become Matthew the writer of the Gospel. Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot would heed His call to “Come, follow me.” Even Judas Iscariot, the one who would betray Him, would hear Jesus’ call to follow.
Twelve men from different walks of life would be invited to become disciples of the Christ. Amazing. Yet even more amazing is that I heard the call, and you heard the call. Some of us heard it as children, some as teenagers, and some as adults, but we heard it nonetheless. We too were from different walks of life, minding our business, going about our daily chores and duties, totally unaware that our Savior, the Son of God, was going to walk by and call our names. “Come, follow me.”
I always chuckled at that bumper sticker “I found it!” that adorned so many cars years ago. “I found it” sounds as if I was really looking for “it” while God was hiding “it” from me. It made it sound as if God was in the bushes, squirreling away salvation where only the most diligent searcher with the determination of the bold and brave would ever find He had hidden it. “I found it.”
Truthfully, I was the one in the bushes hiding my heart and my soul away from the One who was seeking me. He was the one who was looking, walking the dark pathways, shining His light into the shadows calling to me, calling those three little words that have changed the lives of men and women down through the ages since that first time on the shores of the Sea of Galilee . . . “Come, follow me.”
