The Importance of Planning    Alice and I dated during our high school years. We talked about the future and eventually talked about marriage, but it was still a long way off—we thought. On September 12, 1960, I offered her an engagement ring, and she accepted. I had carefully cultivated that relationship, so I was confident enough to make a formal proposal. Alice had graduated the previous June, and I would graduate the following December. We planned the next move, the wedding, for Saturday, June 17, 1961. Alice would leave her home, which her father had built, and her own private room. We found a three-room, second-story apartment and shopped for furniture—the apartment was not furnished. The wedding day arrived, we went on a short trip, and returned to our first apartment, starting a new phase of our lives. There was a lot of step-by-step planning.
   If one reads St. Mark’s account of Jesus calling his first disciples, without considering the other gospel writers’ accounts, they get the image of men making life-changing decisions instantaneously. “And as he was going along beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a round net in the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Come after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men.’ And then, leaving behind the nets, they followed him.” (1:16-18) The writers say that Simon had a house in Capernaum, he was married, and his mother-in-law lived with him, who, it is likely, was a widow. He and Andrew were also businessmen; they owned a boat and had nets.
   A more likely scenario is that these early fishermen followed John the Baptist, heard John declare that Jesus was the Messiah, had heard Jesus teach, and saw his miracles. One writer suggests that Jesus may have stayed in Peter’s house in Capernaum. It is likely that nearly a year passed between Jesus’ baptism and his call for these fishermen to leave their jobs, homes, and families to follow him. Jesus probably discussed with them his need for help and carefully explained what he planned for these followers. So when he told them that it was time to come and help him, leaving “behind the nets, they followed him.”
   There is some hypothesis in this description, but it fits well with the other three gospel narratives. If Alice and I spent a couple years planning our life-changing decision, it seems reasonable that these early disciples would have done something similar. It also makes these men more respectable—the view that they would have carefully planned and thought through this momentous decision before instantly forsaking domestic and financial duties to become itinerant disciples. So when Jesus called, they were prepared; they left their nets, a metaphor for their way of life, and followed him. He still calls the prepared today, so…?
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