SIMON PETER was a man of action: his was that nature that cannot bear to be still and wait: if his Master gave him no command he would act upon his own initiative, and being such a man he exercised an influence upon others. So that when he proposed to go a-fishing his companions fell in with his plans: “and that night they caught nothing.”
As the red dawn chased the night-mists across the sea their Lord stood on the shore. Who shall tell with what tenderness He looked upon them, hungry, weary, and dispirited as they were! He had looked upon them all through that night of toil, had watched over them with an unspeakable love, for they were “His own,” and the love He bore them could not change, and now had come the moment when He would show Himself to them.
Not at first did they recognize Him, not until He proved who He was by commanding the fish of the sea to come to their net. Then spake out that disciple whom Jesus loved, saying, “IT IS THE LORD.”
And so they came to land and found “a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread.” What a showing of Himself to them was this! How it revealed His care for them! THEY WERE COLD, and He knew it, and His own hand had provided the fire to warm them: THEY WERE HUNGRY, and He thought of it, and provided fish and bread to satisfy them: THEY WERE TIRED with their toil, and He sympathized with them in their weariness. Their faithlessness had made them FEARFUL AND ASHAMED; He knew it, and so invited them to sit down before Him, and made them quite at home by His grace, while He gave to them the food that those precious pierced hands had prepared for them. Matchless revelation of Himself! He, their Lord and Master, rejoiced to minister unto them: He, death’s conqueror, and creation’s Lord as He had proved Himself to be, was not indifferent to their bodily necessities, He cared for their smallest need.
Time spent in meditation upon the wonderful manner in which He showed Himself to them will not be wasted, for here is a revelation of His tender interest in His own, and He is just the same today as then, the same to us as He was to those Galilean fishermen.