Caroline’s writing about faith, embodiment, and motherhood has resonated with thousands of readers of all ages and life seasons. Known for her ability to bring familiar Scriptures alive in a fresh, embodied way, readers value the depth and honesty of her words. These days, her writing is published on Substack. Read her latest piece below, click through to another popular post, and subscribe to receive new pieces and support her work.
Breakfast With Jesus
The Sea of Galilee. A boat. A group of fishermen.
Many a Gospel story begins this way. These stories carry a scent of familiarity because we’ve heard them numerous times, but the who, what, where, and when of it all is quite foreign to us living in the modern Western world. We do not make our livelihoods on small fishing boats, after all. But the who and the where of these stories matters because they speak to us about who God is and how God is present in our lives.
The significance of this setting – a boat with some fisherman in the Sea of Galilee – is its utter ordinariness. It is a common place with common people doing a common thing. And it’s here, in the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it of it all that Immanuel appears.
A modern day equivalent might be a group of women and men sitting around a conference table in a drab windowless room, reviewing quarterly budget numbers, or a mom at the grocery store, doing her big shop for the week. It’s regular people in regular places doing regular things.
When Jesus begins his public ministry he walks straight into these ordinary places and invites twelve men to follow him. These men have no power, no real authority, nothing of significance, but Jesus chooses them and, finding him impossible to reject, they leave their lives to join his. And for the next three years, these disciples traverse this Sea many times with Jesus.
The Gospels tell the stories of these men, with their boats, on this Sea, with Jesus. And even though I’ve heard them countless times, in different seasons of my life a story will grip me, captivating my imagination for months at a time. Through imaginative prayer practices I learned from beloved Spiritual Directors who learned them from St. Ignatius, I prayerfully put myself in the boat, on the sea, with the disciples and Jesus.
A few years ago, I was stuck for months in the story of Jesus sleeping in the boat while a wild storm raged and the disciples panicked. For a group of men who’d likely spent their lives on this very water and weathered many storms, this one must have been especially scary for them to react as desperately as they did. Feeling like I too had obediently gotten into a boat only to be surprised by a massive storm, I kept trying to shake Jesus awake, incredulous that he would sleep when *all this* was happening. I thought Jesus was attentive? Caring? Kind? Why wouldn’t he proactively calm the storm?
In time, I discovered the safest place for me – the invitation Jesus was extending to me through this story – was to lie down next to him and rest. To not panic about the storm or try to stop it; to not question if I’d made the wrong decision to go sailing when a storm was brewing; most critically, to not mistrust the heart and intentions of Jesus amidst it. It was ok to succumb to my own weariness, draw close to him, and receive his rest.
This story kept me from drowning in a stormy season.
These days, the story that’s gripping me also features the disciples in a boat on the Sea of Galilee, but Jesus is not with them. At least, not initially.
John 21 tells the story of a handful of disciples who, after witnessing Jesus’ horrific crucifixion and encountering him twice in his resurrected body, decide to go out fishing one night. This alone makes me smile – how utterly human of them.
After watching their beloved friend and teacher be arrested, tortured and crucified, they lock themselves in a room out of fear for their own lives, only for Jesus to walk through the locked door and breathe the peace of God on them.
Can you imagine their absolute shock?
How does one even begin to make sense of anything after experiencing what they did?
So what do they do? They do the one thing they’ve always known:
“I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” (John 21:3)
John recounts how they push their boat out into the water and spend the whole night fishing but catch nothing. It’s the epitome of adding insult to injury – they can’t even do the one thing they once relied on as their livelihood.
How often, in our own Seasons of Disillusionment, do we find ourselves pulled back to the people, places, and things we’ve always known?
These Seasons of Disollusionment are ones we thought would look one way but end up completely differently, ones we thought we had everything figured out, only to be left feeling like the rug was pulled out from under us. In these seasons, we’re tempted to put back on the clothes of our former selves, hoping they’ll return to us a sense of identity and purpose. But, like the disciples who spend a fruitless night on the sea, these things God has already called us out of will no longer satisfy.
As dawn breaks, a man on the shore yells out to the disciples asking if they’ve caught anything, telling them to cast their nets to the other side of the boat. Immediately, two of the disciples realize it is Jesus.
They make their way to shore with a net full of fish and find Jesus waiting for them with a fire, bread, and fish.
“Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.”” (v12)
In the midst of their overwhelm, when they don't know where to turn or what to do or how to explain what just happened, Jesus meets them and feeds them. He knows that what they need after a fruitless night of fishing is a good breakfast, and so he makes one for them. He collects the coals, bread, and fish; he builds the fire and tends to the cooking.
We often skip past this detail and focus on what comes next: Jesus takes Peter for a walk and asks him three times whether Peter loves him. It’s tender and redemptive, well-deserving of our prayerful study. But there is power to behold in Jesus’ generously simple act of preparing and sharing breakfast with his disillusioned friends.
In my own disillusioned weariness, my own wrestling with my failure and uncertainty about the future, I return to this story and remember how Jesus met his friends with breakfast on the beach.
I imagine Jesus doing this for me: greeting me in the morning with a cup of coffee, laying out a plate of my favorite snacks when I grow hungry and frustrated mid-morning and want to just give up. He’s there, with food, and a heart to connect with me. He’s not too busy to sit down and share a meal, to take me for a walk and talk to me about what’s on his heart.
Through an act of service that mirrors what a mother does for her children hour after hour and day after day – preparing and serving a meal – Jesus is showing his disciples the heart of God. This God will gladly do the unseen work of building a fire, gathering the food, and preparing it for his tired, confused, beloved friends.
This is the mothering heart of God.
Friend, this is all Jesus asks of us: to sit and eat what he has prepared. To draw close when we want to run and hide. To believe he really is the God of Plenty who is able to give us more than we can ask, think, or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).
Friend, Jesus really is this good.