Original: October 14, 2007
McMinnville, OR
10 If you falter in times of trouble, how small is your strength! Proverbs 24:10
We did a lot of fishing growing up as a kid. Besides learning to cast my dad taught me the importance of always keeping a tight line. To have "slack" in your line meant line sway, looseness, and a loss of connection between your pole and your bait. Slack line was an invitation for dad to scream, “Tighten your line!”
Fishing trips with dad consisted of this as his favorite sentence, at least you would have thought so by the number of times he used it. Dad seemed to never stop admonishing us to "keep your line tight." You see dad knew, unlike Tom and me, that a slack line was the line that could not feel the bite, rendering your bait useless and efforts futile.
If, in a stroke of luck, we saw the bite, set the hook, and actually got to the point of fighting the fish, the slack line would relieve tension from the hook set in the fish's mouth enabling it to "throw the hook!" A slack line is the worst thing imaginable in fishing. A slack line is the fisherman’s kiss of death. A slack line is the ultimate rookie mistake.
“Tighten your line!”
Listen to how the New American Standard Bible translates this verse: "If you are slack in the day of distress, your strength is limited."
A slack line weakens a fisherman’s potential for catching the big one that always seems to get away. As a man I remember dad’s words, "Always keep your line tight and your pole up when fighting fish." I think my own kids have even heard these words from their dad a time or two as well!
Men, keep your line tight. Stay close to Christ and keep the most important relationship in the universe tight, firm, and solid. Stay close to your wife and listen to her heart, her movements and her words. Stay close to you kids especially during those precarious teen years when they try to pull away.
"Strength is (not) limited" for those men who keep their line tight.
