John Fischer The Catch

Woman crying

Posted on January 7, 2014 by jwfisch

I have a picture on my laptop of a woman crying. Marti sent it to me some time ago related to a Catch I was writing then. I remember being drawn to it and quite disappointed that I couldn’t upload it to the file I use to format and send the Catch. It would have been perfect for that day. Something about too many characters.

Funny thing – I couldn’t take it off my desktop for some reason, and I’ve kept it there for some time even though I know I can’t use it anywhere. It’s such a moving photograph that I will open it from time to time just to look at it again. It’s gotten to be that I feel like I know this woman. I somehow feel her pain. It’s become, for me, a picture of grief – not just universal grief, but this woman’s grief. I hurt for her. I have no idea who she is or why she’s crying, but I hurt for her.

It could be anyone. A single mom unable to cope, a soldier’s wife now a widow, the witness of a tragedy, a mother who lost a child … anything. It doesn’t even have to be a woman. It could be the visual expression of a man’s grief. The more I look at this picture, the more I want to do something.

So I keep it on my desktop, now so fully acquainted with it that I feel like it would be an act of insensitivity to remove it.

It’s just a picture, I tell myself, but then again, maybe it’s more. It’s someone I don’t know, but maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s someone I do know who isn’t telling me everything – someone who feels like this inside but can’t show it.

Maybe it’s someone I will meet today … or maybe tomorrow.

Maybe it’s my wife. I have known her sadness to be this deep. More often than I would like to admit, I have been the cause of it. I need to care about that.

Maybe it’s the picture of a chronic pain accessible to anyone, any time – one of the tragedies associated with life on this earth.

Jesus was said to have been a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Surely that would have been a sorrow he bore through association with our humanity. He took on our sorrow. There is some way in which our sorrow became His.

I don’t get to be aloof. I don’t get to pass this by if Jesus didn’t. The scriptures even say He became sin for us. “He [God] made Him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf” (2 Corinthians 5:21). That’s what I call total identification.

Maybe these are all part of the reason why I keep this picture on my desktop. We are sometimes so quick to want to solve someone’s problem that we fail to enter into it. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.

And now, after all this, believe it or not, I find out I can share the picture with you. I just tried it again and found out it was the file name, not the picture, that had too many characters. So I reduced the file name to simply read, “Woman crying,” and that did it.

So here she is. Now you can care for her a while.

And when it’s day to me it’s night to someone
And when it’s night, you may not want to go on.
– Mark Heard from “Some Folks’ World”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged grief | 8 Comments

Serving up sports

Posted on January 6, 2014 by jwfisch

On Christmas day there was an article on the front page of the Sports section of the Times about a popular coffee shop waitress who loves to talk sports with her customers

(“A side of sports talk,” by Bill Plaschke, Los Angeles Times, p C1, December 25, 2013). Wearing a Kansas City Chiefs Santa hat, she “serves bacon and eggs with generous dollops of news and opinion about sports … Statistics are liberally poured out like syrup. Opinions are plunked into the middle of the table like a bottle of hot sauce.”

Apparently she’s been doing this for some time – long enough to have developed a clientele that comes as much for the sports as for the food. Many of them are retired and they will sit for hours just to listen to the banter. “Sports is more than her passion, it’s also her currency for buying trust and opening hearts.” Words like “community” and “connection” are used throughout this article to describe what this one woman has created using the world of sports as a catalyst.

She’s a student of sports. She has ESPN on all the time at home and follows the scores, standings and side stories of all the major teams, especially focusing on the teams her regulars most relate to. There is a point in which she does this for herself, because she is genuinely interested (she would love to be a sports commentator on TV), but she also does this for the people she serves. It’s a passion turned outwards – creating not an end in itself, but a track on which to run a relationship.

Here at the Catch, where the Gospel of Welcome spreads through relationships, we are especially attuned to what creates and maintains those relationships. Not that we are using relationships as a means to an end, but that we realize God can’t use us in the lives of others if we are not in relationship with them.

Have you ever thought of something you love – something that is a passion with you, whether it’s a hobby or a recreation or health or history – as being something that can help you buy trust and open hearts? Maybe you have even been a little guilty about how much time and interest you put into something because it’s not directly “spiritual.” But this is our Father’s world, and He shines in all that’s fair, so that you can not only find God in the thing you are interested in, you can also find the possibility of relating to lots of other people who have the same interests, and what does that spell? R-e-l-a-t-i-o-n-s-h-i-p-s.

The writer concludes the article with this woman’s boss realizing how knowledgeable she is about sports and how good she is talking about it, saying to her, “You know, you should do something with your life.” Her reply, as she looks around the cafe is quick and confident: “I am doing something,” she told him. “I’m here.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged relationships | 2 Comments

A New Day

Posted on January 3, 2014 by jwfisch

Someone posted the following article by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, Founder and President of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews on our website, and in the interest of shared truth and global cooperation, I am passing it on to our reader’s as a fitting Catch to close out this first week of 2014.

My wife, who loves audio books, has been listening recently to the stories of Tevye the Dairyman through the writings of Sholem Aleichem, originally written in Yiddish and first published in 1894. These are the stories from which the popular musical Fiddler on the Roof was taken, and it has been a treat to be exposed again to this wonderful character who spoke of God as a constant companion with which he carries on a never-ending conversation about the trials and the joys of his life. Any Christian who walks with the Spirit day to day should be on familiar ground with these stories as well as with this following piece by the rabbi.

Instead of starting a new year, he suggests we follow the example of King David and just concentrate on starting a new day. Good advice.

“I lie down and sleep;
I wake again, because the LORD sustains me.
I will not fear though tens of thousands
assail me on every side.”- Psalm 3:5-6

Did you know that when you woke up this morning, you experienced a miracle? When you went to sleep last night, it was an act of great faith – or at least it would have been if you fully understood the risk involved. According to Jewish tradition, sleeping is “one-sixtieth of death.” The soul actually leaves the body and runs the risk of never returning.

This is why the first Jewish prayer said in the morning is thanks to God for restoring our souls. We recognize that if we woke up this morning, it is because God actively intervened so that we could live another day. When God restores our souls each morning, it is tantamount to resurrecting the dead!

In Psalm 3, King David saw this miracle as inspiration.

This psalm was penned during one of the most excruciating episodes of David’s life: His very own son, Absalom, had launched a rebellion against him, and a successful one at that. If not for God’s divine intervention, David would have lost the throne. But David wrote, “I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side.” Although the odds were against him, David was not afraid.

From where did he draw this strength in the face of adversity? The answer is found in the words of his psalm, “I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD sustains me.” David understood that God was working miracles in his life every time he awoke from sleep. If God could perform a miracle on that level daily, David had no doubt that God could – and would – deliver him with more miracles throughout the day.

There are times in our lives when we are in desperate need of miracles. The odds are against us and we are tempted to give up the fight. However, King David reminds us that despair is never an option and hope is always available – because if you are breathing this very moment it’s because you have already received the greatest miracle of all today, the miracle of your life.

There are so many stories to turn to for inspiration. Patients who were told they would die and then lived 50 more years, or people who were destitute and were suddenly blessed with money. But we need not turn any further than our waking up this morning.

As we awaken to the miracles in our daily lives, we will awaken to a day full of possibility, hope, and God’s salvation.

With prayers for shalom, peace,
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged walk by faith | 3 Comments

January 1

Posted on January 1, 2014 by jwfisch

January 1 is floats, football and the Umpteenth Annual Tournament of Roses Parade playing all day long on your television like a circular tape, end to end. One finishes and the same one begins.

January 1 is something sweet in the morning and sliced ham and macaroni salad in the frig, along with any goodies leftover from Christmas (i.e. cookies, date nut bread, candies, fruits and nuts).

January 1 is a full deck on that tablet calendar on your desk, a clean calendar on the wall or the book marker back at Day One of the devotional book.

January 1 is clean and unsullied, like a hillside blanketed in new fallen snow. Not a footprint in sight. It’s a clean slate – a clean year.

January 1 is full of promise and promises. Resolutions they are called. Young people make lots of them. Older people know better, because January 1, in reality, is just another day. Bad habits, like pounds, don’t suddenly fall off on January 1. We are who we were on December 31. We carry the same guy into this pristine world ready to tromp through that blanket of snow and mess up that calendar.

In some ways we might be even more aware of our flaws on January 1, because we’d like a clean start – we’d like to make resolutions and keep them – but the guy in the mirror is the same guy who was there yesterday with a whole year on his back. He may have an empty pack now, but the same stuff is already starting to accumulate there. He can feel it. Feel the pull of the same.

Can we change? Of course we can. Will we? That’s a harder question.

I first thought of writing down the things I’d like to see change about myself in 2014, seal it in an envelope and open it on December 31, but then I thought, if it stays in a sealed envelope I probably won’t even remember what I wrote, and most likely will find myself in the same place a year from now. Better to write it where I can see it every day.

No lasting change will ever be made by sheer human effort. We cannot continue to exert large amounts of will on ourselves every single day. We will grow tired and give up. Real change has to happen by the Spirit. Will is exhaustible; the Spirit is not.

Look, either this Spirit of God in us thing is real or it is not. If it’s real then all sorts of things come to play that can alter the status quo we fear this time of year, things like new life, new mind, new heart, or heck, why not the whole thing … new creation. “Old things are passed away, behold all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). And this has nothing to do with January 1; it has everything to do with January 1 and every day thereafter.

Do we believe it enough to act on it? It’s a moment by moment thing, and it doesn’t start with us; it starts with the Spirit. Reach in for the Spirit. There is power there to change. Will you join me in proving new life this year?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged walk by faith | 2 Comments

People need the Lord

Posted on December 31, 2013 by jwfisch

I just saw a sign for a 1980s party. Yikes. A ‘60s party I can stomach (saddle shoes, bobby socks and Elvis). I can stretch to accommodate a ‘70s party (hippie beads, bell bottoms and CSN&Y). But an ‘80s party? Get real. I can remember when 1980 was science fiction.

Time marches on. The world spins. People get lost in the whirl. We get lost. People need the Lord. We need the Lord.

People need the Lord, people need the Lord.
At the end of broken dreams, He’s the open door.
People need the Lord, people need the Lord.
When will we realize, people need the Lord?

It’s a song written and recorded by Steve Green and covered by numerous Christian artists. It quickly became a standard in middle-of-the-road contemporary Christian music. It’s one of those songs that is over-obvious. When you first hear it, you are sure you have heard it before. But if you try and put it down, it keeps popping up, because it’s a song that has captured beauty in simplicity that states a dead-on truth.

When I first heard it I thought it was too simple. “People need the Lord.” Duh … yeah. It was too big to be said in a sentence. But I must say that over time, this song has worn a deep groove in my soul. The reason it meets us at a deep level is because we realize when we hear it that we need the Lord, and understanding that, is a way of meeting the real need we know that is in everybody.

As long as we know we are among those people who need the Lord. Indeed that is the only flaw in the song, if it causes me to separate myself out from those who are in need – if it’s only other people who need the Lord – then I am aloof and ineffective as a bearer of the gospel. I am just an observer.

Don’t you know that when Billy Graham bowed his head in that famous prayer stance as people came forward night after night in his crusades, that he was coming forward too in his own heart. He was connecting with his own need for the gospel he preaches. Otherwise he would be way too arrogant. He needs the message just as much as anybody. He is as grateful as anybody else for his salvation. It has to be or God wouldn’t have blessed the man as He did.

It’s a good way to go into the New Year. It puts you on the inside track to what every human being longs for. It’s that quiet desperation. It’s that deep down loneliness that grips when the music stops and the party’s over. It’s what you know is true because you know it for yourself before you know it for anybody else: People need the Lord.

People need the Lord. At the end of broken dreams, He’s the open door.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged evangelism, witnessing | 3 Comments

The Gospel of Welcome

Posted on December 30, 2013 by jwfisch

As we wind down to the end of another year, it becomes customary to think about the really important things in life and ask ourselves: What are we doing? Are we accomplishing something or are we spinning our wheels? What do you use to measure such things?

As far as I can tell, there is only one measurement that truly counts at the end of the day. There is nothing more important or fulfilling than knowing the Gospel of Welcome, and knowing we are doing all we can to share it with everyone we know. We don’t all have to be Billy Graham, but we all do have a role to play in the furthering of the Gospel of Welcome in the world, and each of us is in the process of finding out what that is and doing it.

It may sound selfish but it is not. God is concerned first about you. He has provided a way back to Himself through His son, Jesus Christ, but He has left it to you to respond to Him. He does not force His will on anyone. It’s an open invitation.

God loves you.
God wants you.
God is calling you.
He left the door open.

God is saying, “The door to my heart is open. Walk on in. I’ve done everything there is to do to make it possible for you to be welcome in my presence. The rest is up to you. You are welcome here. Come home.”

I have a TV Guide special edition devoted to the life of Billy Graham. On the cover is a picture of him, hands clasped, head bowed, deep in prayer. I know this picture. It’s what he would do while the choir sang “Just As I Am” and he stood on the platform as thousands streamed forward to respond to the Gospel of Welcome. He has just announced in one way or another. “It’s okay; you can come home now,” and that was all that was necessary.

Think about it: it’s the one thing we are here on earth to do — and that is to get right with God.

You can set a record, win an election, found an organization, write a hundred books, change history with your invention, become a household name, but if you end your life on earth having never accounted for your life with God, come up wanting, called on Him to be merciful and discovered, lo and behold, that He is just that, you will have failed to accomplish what you were alive for. Certainly there will be plenty of things to do after this, but nothing quite so important to God, because He has provided eternity for you and He wants you to spend it with Him.

Don’t miss out. Don’t miss out on your own opportunity to come, and, having done that, don’t miss out on providing that same opportunity to others.

It’s good news.
It’s the day of salvation.
God isn’t counting people’s sins against them.
It’s time to come home.
Welcome home!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged the gospel of welcome, witnessing | 1 Comment

December summer

Posted on December 27, 2013 by jwfisch

Two days after Christmas and New Years is five days out. The feeling is one of being somewhat suspended. No one expects to get a lot of business done this week unless you are in retail. “Let’s do lunch”? Not this week. In past years I’ve often taken this week off from the Catch, making it feel as if this week doesn’t count. But now that I’m writing, I know that it does.

Here in Laguna, it’s summer in suspension. It was 75 degrees yesterday and people were walking around town in their bathing suits. We traditionally have lots of visitors from the Midwest this week for the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl game on New Years Day (this year they’re all from Michigan), and of course they are all going to come to the beach. This year it will be Spartan green all over town. For these people, 50 degrees is balmy. That’s our low temperature. You can always tell the tourists; they stand around with their faces toward the sun like they can’t believe they can actually feel it this time of year. (In Lansing, Michigan right now, it’s 25 degrees in the middle of the morning.) It makes it hard to get serious about anything in this environment.

And yet under the surface, life goes on, and angst is sometimes heightened at this time by expectations over family get togethers uncovering riffs and chasms in relationships that normally can be avoided. And yet, this is life, no less important than life in February or May.

What do we need in particular during this time? Lots of forgiveness, both given and received. Our failings and shortcomings are especially visible at this time.

Lots of love. When is there ever enough of this? Love can cover over a multitude of sins, and there will be no shortage of sins showing up this week.

Hope. Suicides are up during the holidays which means loss of hope. No way out. No reason to go on. We need to give people a reason to be alive even if just through a smile and a “Hello.” Lives have been saved by a mere, “How are you today?” Let people know they count.

Mercy. Mercy is not giving others what they deserve. Think about this in terms of yourself. If you don’t want to get what you deserve then you can’t hope that anyone else will either. To pardon yourself, you have to pardon everyone.

Grace. This is getting what we don’t deserve, and this too must be given in order to be received. Grace and mercy are both alike in this. Not that we’re earning either one by giving it out, but if we receive it without giving it, we are merely saying we haven’t really received it. You can’t accept what you don’t want for others or don’t understand. Once you receive and embrace either one of these, you will give it out. You can’t do any other.

I think we need to take time to get below the surface this week. There is a lot lurking there, and a lot that needs to be healed. That just may be the greatest holiday gift ever — to offer healing where needed.

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Merry (day after) Christmas

Posted on December 26, 2013 by jwfisch

Yesterday I wrote to you in the predawn hours of Christmas, something I haven’t done since the Catch began. I was inspired to share the moment with you, as if Santa had the time to sit down and write a short personal note as he finished off the milk and cookies by the fireplace. (And, in actuality, he does. He’s got plenty of time since he only has to visit one house every year just to keep the legend alive. You didn’t know that? The whole North Pole thing and the flying sleigh is really true; it’s just all set up for one house, because that one trip inspires Santas everywhere to keep doing their job. Of course, no one ever really knows if they got the real Santa or the inspired one, but does it matter? It gets the job done, and quite efficiently, I might add.)

Anyway, I digress. Marti didn’t read the Catch until late last night, but it inspired her to write something I am sharing with you this morning. One note: she was born and raised in upstate New York so her familiarity with Rockefeller Center is not imaginary.

My heart is full tonight with those who enjoyed the wonders of a baby’s first Christmas (at least in the eyes of the new parents) and those who are not seeing any new beginnings for many reasons including saying good bye to the beginnings that have ended. (I was going to edit that sentence, but it is so pristinely delivered unadulterated from the right brain of Marti Fischer that I decided to leave it with you to wrestle with. Suggestion: you can try and wrap your left brain around it or you can just let it pass straight through to your right brain and simply enjoy.)

Now that Christmas is over, I want to encourage you all to introduce hope to the hopeless and watch the power of Christ come alive as God did that first Christmas.

Are you merry? Then get out with the unhappy, the lonely, or depressed for whatever reason, and be contagious. Are you sad? Get out anyway because there is no quicker way to lose one’s sadness than to bring joy to someone else. And while I am always speaking about the homeless when I write, the homeless heart matters as much. Maybe even more. Hug someone out of nowhere. Surprise yourself.

Pretend you are ice skating in Rockefeller Center when you spot your “fellow man” as someone in the small crowd skating there. Step aside and let her skate through and wait. The circle of that rink is quite small, and she will come your way again. Greet her with a friendly “Hello” and let her pass. It will not take long to notice, as she turns the bend, that her shoelace is loose or her scarf is trailing. Let her through and go after her at top speed before she hurts herself, but wait until she is without an audience, and you are without one as well.

It’s all about keeping your eyes open, respecting your fellow man, and noticing how you can make someone’s life better.

Merry (day after) Christmas!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Christmas, giving | 3 Comments

Early Morning

Posted on December 25, 2013 by gunsim11

It’s that hour of the early morning when the darkness is deep and the silence, profound. Because it happens to be Christmas morning, that makes it even deeper. Now I know where “not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse” comes from. Usually I am up at this early hour because just got up to write to you, but this morning, it’s because I never went down.

It’s that hour of Christmas Eve known well to parents who have been up all night putting together bicycles and wrapping last minute presents. Every year I tell myself I’m not going to let this happen again. I’m going to get everything done ahead of time so I can relax on Christmas Eve and actually get a good night’s sleep, but no matter what, I always seem to end up in this place. This year I’ve decided to accept it as part of the ritual and actually enjoy it.

Our Christmas is all messed up this year. It’s the first time we have not all been together on Christmas Eve. Work schedules of our oldest two have prevented tradition. So we decided to celebrate Christmas a few days from now, but that’s not working for me – not on Christmas Eve – when I’m anticipating trying to keep Chandler’s interest without his big brother and sister around.

No matter, the specialness of the day will win out as it always does.

So this morning, as I meet you coming instead of going, I want to take just a moment before I try for a few hours of sleep, to thank you for these moments we spend together. They mean everything to me. You have enabled me to have a platform for my thoughts and emotions and you have allowed Marti and me to enter your hearts as you have, ours. It is from the bottom of our heart that we wish you all a very Merry Christmas remembering the day when Christ our savior was born. Indeed, He was born and nothing has been the same since.

Merry Christmas.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Seek

Posted on December 24, 2013 by jwfisch

Everyone was seeking.

The wise men sought a star. The angels sought an audience. The shepherds sought a stable.

Every Jew alive sought the savior. (Every male child born was possibly him. Every female child born carried the hope of possibly being his mother. It had been this way for centuries, ever since the promise was made to Eve that her offspring would crush the head of Satan, and the promises to Abraham and David that the line through which he would be born would come through them.)

Everyone was seeking. They were not just living; they were seeking. The wise men were not just fooling around in the heavens when they stumbled upon this strange star. They were looking for that star. That very one. It had been predicted not only in Hebrew scriptures, but in other scriptures as well and in ancient charts of the heavens. They’d been looking all their lives for that star. God planted it in the heavens, in their books and in their minds. Their fathers and mothers died without seeing it, but they passed on the hope and the search to their children.

It remains true for us today. The fact that we were born after His birth doesn’t change anything. Everyone before Christ knew someone was coming for them. Everyone after Christ knows someone came. Either way, you seek him.

There is a hope that lives — that breathes in a human body. Everyone breathes it. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows there is something more than what they are getting. Jews know this, but Gentiles know it too. It’s built into our DNA. We are not born stupid. We are all born seeking.

We are born remembering … something. Not sure what it is, but there is something there. Something happened that involves me and it involves hope. Great hope for everyone in the human race. Glad tidings of great joy to everyone in the whole world.

When we take the Gospel of Welcome to the world, we are not preaching something new. We are connecting people to something ancient — something that’s been there all along. Something they’ve known about — something they have been looking for all along. Something they suspected, but never had the courage to believe until now, until someone came with the Gospel of Welcome and they finally got it.

Can there be anything more compelling than this?

And now that we know it, the search isn’t over. It never is. We still have vast deserts to cross and miles and miles to traverse. Our star is still moving. We just know where to look now. Each day holds something yet to know or see. That’s why we keep looking, and why we keep pointing.

Don’t just live. Seek.

O star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect Light.

Help us get the Gospel of Welcome to 35 more countries. We’re in 139 now. How exciting to be bringing something we know everyone’s already looking for! Kimberly sent $200 this morning. Linda sent $5. We are so grateful to them and others who have taken part in our current campaign. We are off to a good start. We have a long ways to go. Will you join Kimberly and Linda and send what you can now, or become a monthly contributor?