But the fishing’s good

It was made into a screenplay for film, but the book is one of the most inspiring I have read: Where the Crawdads Sing, written by Delia Owens. It’s a murder mystery/love story/ overcoming- the-odds book. Kya is a girl who raised herself from age 10 in the marshes of North Carolina.

After her mother was abused, suffered a mental breakdown and left the family, her siblings, also facing abuse from their father, left home, too. One day, before his disappearance, her father takes her to a small, bait store owned by Mr. Jumpin’. Her disturbed, pessimistic father introduces her to Mr. Jumpin’, then observes to the owner, “It’s a dangerous world, isn’t it?”

Mr. Jumpin’ responds with an affirmation that I have become fond of repeating amidst dark circumstances: “It is. But the fishing’s good.”

So much in this sad, old world can make us truly believe that it’s a very dangerous place. It is so necessary to our life-outlooks to balance this danger against all that God created and “saw that it was good.”

One day, in his despondency over being shipwrecked, Robinson Crusoe began a journal. He listed the 'evil' that had befallen him, in contrast to the 'good' that was also his lot: Evil: I am cast upon a horrible, desolate island, void of all hope of recovery.

Good: But I am alive; and not drowned, as all my ship’s company were.

Evil: I am singled out and separated, as it were, from all the world, to be miserable.

Good: But I am singled out, too, from all the ship’s crew, to be spared from death; and He that miraculously saved me from death can deliver me from this condition.

Evil: I am divided from mankind—a solitaire; one banished from human society.

Good: But I am not starved, and perishing on a barren place, affording no sustenance.

Evil: I have no clothes to cover me.

Good: But I am in a hot climate, where, if I had clothes, I could hardly wear them.

Evil: I am without any defense or means to resist any violence of man or beast.

Good: But I am cast on an island where I see no wild beasts to hurt me, as I saw on the coast of Africa; and what if I had been shipwrecked there?

Evil: I have no soul to speak to or relieve me.

Good: But God wonderfully sent the ship in near enough to the shore, that I have got out as many necessary things as will either supply my wants or enable me to supply myself, even as long as I live.

After reviewing the pros and cons of his condition and, in spite of the horror of his condition, he realized that, nevertheless, God was on his side and that he had much to be thankful for.

Author Daniel Defoe gives these words to his character, Crusoe: One morning, being very sad, I opened the Bible upon these words, “I will never, never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” Immediately it occurred that these words were to me; why else should they be directed in such a manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over my condition, as one forsaken of God and man? “Well, then,” said I, “if God does not forsake me, of what ill consequence can it be, or what matters it?”

Goodness, truth, beauty, courage, faith; these things are just as true and abundant, if not more so, than the “evil” we experience. And we, too, can choose to respond to it with affirmations of the “good.” I choose Mr. Jumpin’s: “But the fishing’s good.”