Eugene Luning, one of the staff writers at Sea Harp Press, has spent the last few years experimenting with a “glimpse” style of writing about the life of Jesus of Nazareth: in essence, for every single moment throughout His ministry years, what might’ve come before, during, or after that incident that helps us to “see” it better.

What follows is a scriptural narrative and one of these imaginative glimpses.

– Luke 5:1-11

One day the people were crowding closely round Jesus to hear God’s message, as he stood on the shore of Lake Gennesaret. Jesus noticed two boats drawn up on the beach, for the fishermen had left them there while they were cleaning their nets. He went aboard one of the boats, which belonged to Simon, and asked him to push out a little from the shore. Then he sat down and continued his teaching of the crowds from the boat.

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Push out now into deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”

Simon replied, “Master! We’ve worked all night and never caught a thing, but if you say so, I’ll let the nets down.”

And when they had done this, they caught an enormous shoal of fish—so big that the nets began to tear. So they signalled to their friends in the other boats to come and help them. They came and filled both the boats to sinking point. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell on his knees before Jesus and said, “Keep away from me, Lord, for I’m only a sinful man!”

For he and his companions (including Zebedee’s sons, James and John, Simon’s partners) were staggered at the haul of fish that they had made. Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid, Simon. From now on your catch will be men.”

So they brought the boats ashore, left everything and followed him.

In the moment… 

The morning sea sparkles with the dance of pinpoint light. The windtide laps the gravelly shore, frothing, sucking. A crowd of perhaps a hundred people is walking away from the shoreline, up toward the village. Out on the water are two fishing boats—a few feet separate their gunwales—as four men fight to pull aboard a single net between them. They reach down the ladder of crosswebs, hand over hand, struggling to pull aboard a massive catch of a strangely mixed school. First, the right hand crew—two men—lift their edge a little higher and dump some of the net into the left hand boat, filling it. The boat drops demonstrably toward the waterline. Then the left hand crew—the other two—lift their edge over their heads until the rest of the fish land in the right hand boat. It too drops.

In less than five minutes, both boats have trimmed sail and labored back into the harbor; their hulls scrape as they beach. Three of the men drop the sails as the fourth walks off toward the north. Leaving the fish in the boats, the three then follow the fourth man northward.