"Go Fish!"

The player whose turn it is asks another player for their cards of a particular kind. For example, the person whose turn it is might say, "Mary, do you have any threes?" If Mary has any threes, she must give them to the person who asked for them. If Mary doesn't have any threes, she says, "Go fish," and the person who asked draws a card from the "ocean." When you collect a set of four cards of the same kind, you show the set to the other players and place the four cards face down in front of yourself.

Go Fish continues until either someone has no cards left in their hand or the draw pile runs out. The winner is the player who then has the most sets of four.

Talking about playing the game of "Go Fish" makes me think about the day when Jesus chose his disciples.

Jesus was standing by the sea of Galilee and a large crowd of people began to gather around him. He saw some fishermen nearby who were cleaning and mending their nets so he climbed into one of the boats which belonged to a man whose name was Peter. Jesus told Peter to put the boat out a little way from the shore. Peter did as Jesus instructed him and Jesus sat in the boat teaching the people.

When he had finished teaching, Jesus said to Peter, "Put the boat further out into the deep water and let down your nets to catch some fish."

"We've been fishing all night long and haven't caught a thing, but if you say so, we will let down the nets one more time," Peter answered.

Do you know what happened? They started pulling the nets up and there were so many fish that the nets began to break. When they pulled the fish into the boat, there were so many fish that the boat began to sink. When Peter and his fellow fishermen saw this, they were were afraid.

Jesus said, "Don't be afraid," Jesus said. "From now on, I want you to go fish for people."

The Bible tells us that they pulled their boats up onto the shore, left everything, and followed Jesus to "go fish" for people.

Jesus wants you and me to "go fish" for people too. If we will be faithful in telling people about Jesus and his love, we can trust Jesus to bring in the catch!

Heavenly Father, Jesus, has told us to go fish for people. We will go and tell others about Jesus, and trusting him to bring them into the boat. Amen.