WORTH WHILE
Story★★★★A FRIEND of mine is a great preacher and a great fisher¬ man. He likes to take a week off now and then and go to a lake in Michigan and fish.
One day he noticed a group of fishermen at the northern end of the lake who were rapidly baiting and pulling in the perch, while he, at the other end of the lake, was not getting even a nibble. He decided to row his boat over to the little cove where they seemed to be having such good luck, and anchor to a tree stump he saw in the lake. For a full hour he sat there fishing, and while the other fishermen about two hundred yards away were still getting bites, he was still getting nothing at all.
As the afternoon wore on he suddenly realized that he was farther and farther away from the other group. Investigating, he discovered that he had anchored his boat not to a tree stump, as he thought, but to a floating log which looked like a tree stump jutting out of the water.
He chuckled to himself as the saw what he had done, and said, preacherlike; “If a dumb guy anchors his boat to a 80 floating log he must expect to drift with the currents; if he wants to anchor his boat or his life to something, why doesn’t he have sense enough to anchor it to something that is stable and permanent, like the church, or home, a com¬ munity, or to religion.” He said to me: “I saw at once that I could go to town with an experience and a story like that, so I was glad that I had not caught any fish that day.
I had caught a great illustra¬ tion and I had caught a great idea. Since that day I have been using it as a subject in my talks to young people, and older people too. I’ve been telling them that if they want to ! anchor their lives to something, investigate to ascertain if it’s worth while—like the church, the Bible or religion, good character, honest friends, a college education, or what have you. For the love of Mike, and good sense, anchor yourself to something worth while and permanent!”
The vernacular in which the story was told was amusing to me. A more cultured, refined minister than either of us could “go to town” with that idea even though he put it in the language of the fisherman and the parlance of the every¬ day man. t~H
The point
A fisherman anchored to a floating log drifted with currents; the parable teaches one must anchor life to something stable.