John Fischer The Catch

I passed our town library the other day and felt a pang of nostalgia. I used to spend a lot of time writing in libraries. There’s a certain feeling you have walking into a library that you don’t get anywhere else. There’s an immediate hush that comes over you like the hush that insulates a neighborhood after a snowfall. You suddenly feel smarter, like all the books that surround you are accessible to your brain even though you haven’t read them. It’s a disappearing feeling now in this digital age.

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This will probably be the shortest “Catch” ever. But there is a reason for that. Shorter time to read leaves more time to think. And I want you all to think a lot about this.

OK, I’m going to ask you two questions…

Question 1: What did you have to do with your first birth?

Nothing?

Question 2: What did you have to do with your second birth?

Nothing?

You played no more part in being born again than you did being born. Nor can anyone make themselves born again any more than they could have made themselves born.

What is the significance of this? Your salvation and mine was New Covenant generated from the beginning. God did everything to start you off (and He will do everything to complete your new life). Or as we have come to say, “Everything from God; nothing from me.”

How is that for a new understanding of Grace?

I’d like you to spend some time thinking about this, and I would love to hear from you what you discover as you reflect on this amazing truth.

A Tribute to John on his Birthday
by Marti Fischer

There are people who build platforms.
There are people who build audiences.
And then there are rare souls who stand on the wall and refuse to stop watching while everyone else falls asleep.

John is one of those people.

For most of the world, a prophet is someone who predicts the future. But that is not how I have experienced John after walking beside him through decades of life, ministry, hardship, disappointment, sacrifice, faithfulness, and grace. A prophet is someone who sees beneath the surface of things. Someone who hears the tremble before the earthquake. Someone who notices what everyone else has learned to ignore.

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Today (May 14, 2026) is a Christian holiday in some European countries. I bet many of you didn’t know that. I can say that without any arrogance because I didn’t know it either. And I clearly wouldn’t have known it had I not read an article today by a pastor friend of mine from Missouri, Brian Zahnd, about how it is the least known holy day in the Christian calendar. Give up? It’s Ascension Day, the fortieth day after the resurrection—the day the church remembers Christ’s ascension into heaven. 

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Grace.

That strange, beautiful word that sounds too soft for the world we live in. Too naïve. Too easy. Too impractical for a culture built on performance, outrage, and keeping score.

And yet grace keeps showing up.

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