A happy company of schoolboys with home-made fishing rods, cut from trees, are on the way for a day's fishing in the country, laughing and shouting as they go, planning what they will do with their fish before they catch them, as some older people do with other things of more value than a few small trout fished from the tiny stream.
I happened to be out that way in the evening and met the row of young fishermen looking tired and feeling downcast, for like some fishermen of whom we read in the Bible, they had "taken nothing.”
It was amusing to hear the various reasons for the want of success. One had the "wrong kind of bait;" another had "too short a line;" a third had pierced his hand with a hook, caught himself instead of the fish, while a fourth most confidently affirmed there was "not a trout in the stream.”
But two little fellows who had been quietly fishing only a short way further up, had a string of fine spotted trout out of the same stream all the same. The young fishermen, successful and otherwise, have their lessons for us all in greater things, the things of Eternity and of the soul.
Napoleon thought he could conquer Europe, tried it, was disappointed. He was conquered, himself, banished from the land he thought to rule, and died an exile in St. Helena. He failed to catch his fish.
Tom Paine, a noted infidel, who denied the existence of a God, and wrote a book called "The Age of Reason," said in his last hours, "I would give worlds, if I had them, that the book had never been published," and cried out, "If ever the devil had an agent I have been that one." He expected to catch the world for Satan and infidelity, but the hook caught himself and ruined him for time and eternity.
Voltaire, seated in his house in Geneva, said there would "not be a Bible in Europe within a hundred years," but that very house, which was acquired by one of the Bible Societies, was filled with Bibles from floor to ceiling, and hundreds of thousands more have been circulated from it in all Europe. The great skeptic was disappointed, he had the wrong bait, but the Word of God grew.
Cecil Rhodes dreamed of a united South Africa with himself at its head, but he was cut off before his dream was realized, and lies buried on the top of one of its mountains, awaiting the resurrection hour, and the judgment, when he will give an account to God.
All these, and thousands more, want forth in the morning of life to make themselves a name in the world, but they all were disappointed, they all died before the object of their life was attained. They failed like the young fishermen.
The only one who comes back in triumph, bringing with him the fruit of his labor is the Christian, the one who knows Jesus Christ and lives for Him, not serving to be saved, but saved by grace to begin with, he goes forth to serve. None who truly live for Christ, and serve Him are disappointed.
Robert Cleaver Chapman, an aged pilgrim, who went to be with Christ in his hundredth year, said, "I spell 'disappointment,' by changing the `d' to an 'H'; then it reads 'His appointment.'”
He knew no disappointment, because a loving Father ordered all his path. So He will yours, if you are one of His children, through faith in Christ Jesus.