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However, so that we do not offend them, go to the
sea and throw in a hook, and take the first fish that comes up; and when you
open its mouth you will find a shekel. Take that and give it to them for you
and me.
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Matthew 17:27
As always, the tax man wants his “share,” and though He
could argue an exemption, this sort of bickering would interfere with Jesus’s
mission. He therefore tells Peter to go catch a fish, which will miraculously
have a coin in its mouth. This coin is to be used to pay the tax for both Jesus
and Peter.
So, what’s the miracle?
Does Jesus magically make this coin appear from nothing as
Peter catches the fish? Or did He create the whole fish, placing it right onto
Peter’s hook? I think it’s a lot simpler, yet infinitely more complicated, than
snapping one’s fingers and making things materialize.
20/20.
As humans, we are trapped in time as well as in space. The
best decisions we come up with are those useless ones devised in hindsight. God
doesn’t have this disadvantage. For God, hindsight is foresight and His
decisions made in foresight are perfect. God’s influence on a single shekel in
a single verse of the New Testament could be a story in itself.
A story in itself.
A man walks along the
beach. He yearns for the love of a woman, or maybe he prays for the health of a
child. He loves God, and he knows that as long as he just believes, things will
work out for the best. As a small token of sacrifice he winds up and throws a
coin into the sea…
***
A ship, bound for
parts unknown, is caught in a squall and looks as though it’s going to smash
into a rocky shoreline. The pagan crew tries in vain to right her, to get her
pointed back out to sea, but nothing is working. As a final, desperate gesture
the captain drops to his knees on the pitching deck and speaks a prayer to the
God of the Jews, the One True God. As he finishes his prayer, the ship pitches
violently to port and, finding a trough in the waves, is forced away from the
shoreline at the last minute. Several items are lost from the top deck, but the
captain, a changed man, is grateful to just be free of the rocks. One of those lost
items is a small bag of coins…
***
Three fishermen have
come ashore, their boat laden with the day’s catch. They can’t wait to get to
the tavern, and as a fishmonger gives them their last coin, they snatch it and
rush for the town. One jostles another, and a coin flies from a hand. It hits
the deck and begins to roll away. One of the fishermen tries to stop it with
his foot, but it rolls between two planks and into the water…
Timing.
It’s all about timing. From the coin hitting the water, to a
single fish snatching that coin, to that same fish deciding that Peter’s bait
looks positively scrumptious, it’s all timing. It’s a complicated thing to get
one’s head around until we realize that God is looking at time from both
directions, from no direction at all. Weaving such a tapestry is a
straightforward task; people lose coins in the water all the time. For God it’s
just a matter of getting the fish to those coins.
Taking the bait.
So let’s explore this a little further. Does God coerce a
specific fish to snatch a specific coin? Or was this one fish born for that
purpose? Was there an ancestor, sometime back at the dawn of creation, who
begat offspring and thus began a cycle which would culminate in the appearance
of a specific coin in the mouth of a specific great- great- great- great-
great- grand-carp? Was this a preordained tax remittance? Can a fish be born
for a specific purpose and still have free will? Can a man?
Of course. I think that it was the fish’s decision to snatch
that coin. God doesn’t have to coerce an animal which already has a
predilection for the consumption of shiny things. He just has to make sure that
animal finds the shiny object. But does God have to make the fish swim to that
coin on that particular day? No, because the fish was swimming that way anyway.
It was born to swim to that place every day. Did God then make the fish swim to
Peter’s hook? Why would he have to? The fish swam to that spot at that time every
day. It’s the way that fish was designed.
We need only consider who designed the fish.
It’s a complicated thing, but only to those of us who live
in one direction. Once a decision has been made, it’s been made and it is relegated
to the past. We can look back on its rightness or wrongness, but all we can do
is look back. God, however, can see action and consequence. God can see the
results before he’s set the wheels in motion.
Oh, the possibilities.
The scenarios are endless, especially if your work is not
constrained by the limitations of time. A mundane coin, created by a normal
smith in a normal city, finds its way into the hand of a normal human being,
who facilitates its entry into the sea. From there it finds its way into the
mouth of a single fish among many, a fish who likes shiny baubles and prefers
to swim in specific places. There’s no magic in the standard sense; the coin
didn’t appear from nothing. And yet, there is a kind of magic; the magic of our
interconnectedness, the magic of our working together to accomplish God’s task.
Through actions good or bad, you could be working right now for God or one of
His people.
Father, I didn’t know it for a huge part of my
life, but hindsight tells me you’ve been there since Day One. I don’t know if
my coin made it into the fish’s mouth, if I’ve had any effect at all on my
brothers and sisters, but I hope that I have. I can’t do anything about
the past, but the future will be
different, Father. You have my promise.
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