For those of you who don’t know, I live on the coast of Georgia.  Its a great place to live.  Winter only lasts about two months, and the environment highly encourages my hobbies of sleeping on the beach, skimboarding, and occasionally fishing/crabbing.  I go skimboarding twice a week early in the morning (sunrise), and this year I have noticed a lot of sharks – more than usual.  Its true, our area is the official shark breeding area for the east coast of USA (so we have a lot of sharks anyway).  I see a handful of sharks every time I go out (small ones, but still), whereas in the past few years combined I’ve only seen a handful.

So I was reading in the paper yesterday that there are a lot more sharks this year.  Its because we’re not getting much rain this summer, and lack of rain raises the salinity (amount of salt) in our waters.  High salinity drives away a lot of fish, but attracts pogies (little fish whose sole purpose in life is to be eaten by bigger fish, i.e. sharks).  So its not a great time to be a fisherman, unless you want to catch sharks or pogies, which no one does because they are worthless.

On Sunday, Jay preached about Jesus hanging out with sinners (tax collectors and prostitutes – Mark 2:13-17).  Religious people had a hard time with this, but Jesus was firm in his calling.  As He says, “The healthy don’t need a doctor, but the sick do.”  Jesusrs wanted to be around “sinners.”  He wanted to swim in the sharky waters.  And the coolest thing is he didn’t go in to preach or to judge or to punish.  He went in to love, and live among them, living a life that stood in direct contrast to their ways, and never compromised.  “Sinners” were attracted to Jesus.  They saw something different in Him – that He loved them and accepted them as they were.  And after they were exposed to that kind of love, it changed them.  In this Mark 2 passage, Jesus does not become a tax collector – Levi becomes a true disciple.

I’m not sure my life would attract that many “sinners.”  Maybe it would if I was around more “sinners.”  I guess what I’m saying is, we need to evaluate our “salinity.”  Are we living a life that attracts the “sharks” and the “pogies?”  Or do we only look for the more “attractive” fish?  Jesus went for the sharks.