Are You Fish or Flotsam; Children's Bible Lesson

Are you fish or flotsam? Jesus teaches about choices in the Parable of the Net. Choose to be a fish so you don’t get thrown away like sea trash.

Are you fish or flotsam?

One day Jesus told his disciples a new parable story.

The new story was about a fishing net. You see, some of the disciples were fishermen, so they could easily understand what Jesus meant by this new parable.

This is the story:

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The sun shot the first rays of morning over the horizon. As the sky lightened, the fishermen saw no clouds reflecting back the sun’s rays. It would be a beautiful day.

“Okay,” said Jethro. “It’s time to bring in the nets.”

“I’ll be right there,” his fishing partner, Amos, assured Jethro. “I’ve got our barrels all lined up, ready to sort the night’s catch.”

“Good, good!” said Jethro. “This net is full! I hope we got a lot of fish!”

Amos grabbed the end of the fishing net opposite where Jethro held on. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” said Amos. “I’m ready. On the count of three.”

The men positioned their feet securely and tightened their grip on the net.

“One… two… three…” The men’s arms and backs bulged as their muscles strained to pull in the net. Amos felt a foot begin to slide, and he quickly pushed it against a rock. They pull-ll-ll-ed at the net, and slowly, scraping and creaking, it came up on the shore.

“Wow!” yelled Amos. “That’s a lot of fish!”

Jethro smiled. His whole face lit up. “Yes, I think we have a good catch. There’s more fish than trash this time.”

“Awesome!” enthused the other fisherman. “Let’s sort this stuff and get our fish to market.”

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Sorting the Fish from the Flotsam

The men tied the net securely so the catch could not escape back into the water.

Then they began to sort. The fish went into one barrel, the flotsam, or trash, into another.

The net dragged up much flotsam from the sea. There were large seashells, pieces of driftwood and empty bottles in the net along with the fish. The net caught everything in it’s path, whether it was good fish to sell or eat, or flotsam and jetsam that was trash to the fishermen. They couldn’t make money from the flotsam, so they threw it away.

Finally the contents of the net was all sorted.

“Check that out!” laughed Amos. “The fish barrel is fuller than yesterday or the day before!”

Again his boss smiled. This was a good day. “Yes, and the flotsam barrel isn’t too heavy to carry to the trash heap. Yesterday we got so much trash we had to haul it in two trips.”

Amos cringed, remembering the hard work of disposing the barrels of flotsam into the dump area. Not only was the path to the dump rocky, there were thorns that constantly grew in the way. And the path was steep, rising up a hill to a sharp drop off into a small canyon where all the fishermen dumped their flotsam. That canyon absolutely reeked. No matter how Amos tried not to breathe the aroma of the dump, he could never hold his breath long enough. And some days, when the trash heap got too big, the pile was burning. Amos thought the days when the dump just reeked was so much better than the days it burned.

No, hauling the flotsam away was not a good job.

But when that horrible job was done, they had the wonderful opportunity to sell their fish, get paid, then celebrate the day’s catch with a good meal and a nice nap.

Yes, the life of a fisherman was good, Amos thought.