The Christian Appeal (February 2000)
Issue Theme: Going Home

Fishing
by Gene Shelburne 

I love the story David Egner told years ago in Our Daily Bread about an airline pilot who was based in Minneapolis.

 Copilots who flew beside this fellow noticed that every time they took off from the Twin Cities’ airport the flight captain would ask them to take the controls. Until the plane was high in the sky the pilot would stare down at the terrain as it receded below.

 Finally one of the copilots got up enough nerve to ask his boss, “What do you always look at down there?”

 “See that little creek just north of those woods?” the pilot replied. “I used to sit on that creek bank and fish when I was a kid. And every time a jet roared into the sky, I would gaze at it until it vanished and wish with all my heart that I could be up there flying that plane.”

 Then he added with a sigh, “Nowadays I’m flying that plane, and I look down there and wish with all my heart that I was back down there with my cane pole on that creek bank.”

 Most of us are like that pilot, I suspect. We seldom know how good we’ve got it until we don’t have it anymore.

 We grumble about our mates’ eccentric habits until the sudden heart attack or car crash takes them from us. Then we would give anything we possess to have them back, weird habits and all.

 We fuss and fume about the seemingly mindless aggravations we have to put up with on the job, until one day the company downsizes and we no longer have a job.

Then we’d almost hock our souls for the right to cope with those same aggravations again.

 The neighbors’ dog yaps all night and their kids romp through our petunias. We bluster about wanting to be rid of such nuisances, until our company transfers us to Sloboken without asking if we want to go. Then we spend long forlorn weeks of homesickness, yearning for the neighborhood we had learned to call home.

 Why is it so hard for the boy on the creek bank to know how good he’s got it? Why is it that the grass that looked so much greener so often turns out to be bitter?

 Look around you right now and thank God for what’s right about your life. Savor the good parts. Bask in present blessings. Thank God for the creek bank and the cane pole while they are yours.