John Fischer The Catch

Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:31-32

We live in a day and age when truth is hard to come by. First, postmodernism has pretty much done away with the concept of truth being absolute. Truth is pretty much what you make it. It’s relative. There is your truth and my truth; not THE truth. Even biblical truth is up to interpretation, and that’s within the church. Outside the church, truth is totally up to whatever information source you choose to listen to. There is truth on the right, and truth on the left, and conspiracy theories, and on the internet, literally hundreds of sources of information, hardly any of them verifiable. How can we even have a discussion when there is no central source of information we can trust or agree upon?

This is why, in a time like this, the words of Jesus come as such a refreshing contrast  to what we see and experience around us — something solid — something we can know and count on. Not only does Jesus tell us we can know the truth, He tells us how we can. The knowledge of true truth comes from holding to the teaching of Jesus and becoming His followers. When we hold to His teaching, we know what to do. When we are His disciples, we have Him living inside us through His Holy Spirit guiding and empowering us.

And what is the teaching of Jesus? On one hand that’s a pretty big assignment. We’ve got His teaching spread out over four gospels in the New Testament. And yet, we have those teachings summed up into one statement. One statement which Jesus said if you get this, you get all the law and the prophets. And that is to love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Do this, Jesus said, and you will know the truth, and more than that: the truth will set you free.

That’s the way to do it. Judge all truth by love — love of God and love of one another. Then we know what truth is and what truth does. Hold to this everybody. This is so important. Love.

In my multi-layered novel, Dark Horse, I tell about a camp where white horses are pampered, celebrated, and trained to pose in ways that hide any of their darker markings, and are striven to deceive others into believing that they are all white. I hope you discover for yourself when reading the four part scenario I condensed from the Dark Horse that it isn’t what you look like, but, as the book’s liberator says, “It’s what you do when you follow the will of the White One.” It’s an important story for our times as we look to break out of our Covid isolation to answer the call to discipleship — to follow the Spirit as Dark Horses ourselves, running straight for the enemy camp. 

You are going to welcome back Bob Souer as the famous voice actor who narrates our stories, and embrace Deborah Mullan as illustrator and video creator in the following four sequences you have or will receive by email and on the Catch website.

But here is the back story:

Over two months ago, our volunteer team agreed to create for our end-of-the year campaign a Dark Horse theme, offering the book and the album as our New Year’s gift of encouragement to anyone who contributed $20 or more. Many objected because a gift of $20 would not cover our costs. That didn’t matter to me. What matters was that everyone participates, knowing there are men and women within this body — dark horses all — who would agree with me, and would be quick to cover those who would not be in a place to give at this time, while also making up what is necessary to make our Ministry’s goal of $15,000.

The strategy was created, assignments made, and the project was to be ready for roll out before Christmas so that all of us might enjoy the much needed break between Christmas and tonight. 

I agreed to accepting the lead to this important campaign.

And then, I got caught in condensing the Dark Horse novel into four short compelling stories and I completely forgot about the team members necessary to create the important aspects of the campaign. 

I forgot that I am not running as a Dark Horse alone. As a matter of fact, there is no such thing. Nor do I have the right to interrupt other dark horses’ lives just because I quickly learned that timing is everything.

For instance, our video expert, Deborah, is a full time working mom of three children under 9 with obvious limited time to herself. People have lives of their own including out of town family trips. A steadfast contributor to this ministry, director of publications, Terri Main, was given the week off, and who would have considered our director of discipleship would come down with Covid? And there are many more whom this ministry relies on and we can count on — provided I follow the prescribed timeline, which I did not.

So I need your help. I mean I desperately need your help. I mean, I desperately, urgently need your help. Tonight was to have been the culmination of four days of reaching toward our goal. Many of you have been with us before when we have created stories and lessons for these last few days as we seek to track our progress along the way to our goal.

Now there is no time, so I ask you to do the difficult thing and pick up the pace and make right what I have caused to go so terribly wrong. 

We need you in the many facets of this Ministry, but tonight, and before midnight, I need you to give with compassion and love to the vision that we are all united around, and that is to introduce the Gospel of Welcome — Grace Turned Outward — to everyone, everywhere. Can we do it all in one night? Let’s see if we can. And God bless you all, regardless.