Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Outdoor Devotion - "There He is."

Repeated casts on the Roanoke that early, spring morning proved fruitless. Although the striper run was in full swing a front pushed through eastern North Carolina blanketing the sky in cumulus wonder and turning off the bite like a switch. We threw the entire tackle box, cloussers, spooks, deer hair jigs, even live bait to no avail. No fish, not even a bite, nothing, nada. It was going to be a long, long day.
Around noon, as the first ray of sunlight broke through the cloud cover, our fishing fortune changed. A quick glance up the river revealed doubled rods and fisherman smiles in almost every boat. Simultaneous cries of “there he is” from the stern and bow of the skiff signaled the stripers’ barometric-driven hibernation was over. The bite was on.
Another Carolina Spring morning found me enveloped in thick foliage waiting for a Caswell County monarch to make an appearance. After half a dozen different calls including my favorite, Lynch’s Fool Proof, and several location changes, covering a couple hundred acres without so much as a peep, I finally had a tom declaring his intentions of paying me a visit. Ten minutes later, with a subtle nudge and a whispered “there he is,” a bronze feathered figure appeared in the wheat field. After a brief, amorous dance in front of two hen decoys the old tom met his end. “There he is.” That one sentence signifies hours, days or even weeks of preparation and hard work are about to pay off. No other phrase more aptly decries impending, sporting success.

“There he is.” also indicates spiritual success. Every person who accepts Jesus as their Savior is called to be an imitator of Christ. As we walk through our daily lives, as Christians, it is important for us to live in such a way that those around us, witnessing the way we treat others at work, the way we talk to the waitress in our favorite restaurant, the way we react to the actions of others in traffic, see Jesus. They should be able to take one look at our lives and say “There He is.”

”Be imitators of God, therefore as dearly loved children.” Ephesians 5:1