The Story of Fishermen Having Breakfast with Jesus (John 21)

In the last two Bible Stories, Jesus met with and showed himself to his disciples, but he was not with them every day as he was before he was crucified. Jesus was going back to heaven soon, and maybe he was teaching his disciples to believe in his spiritual presence even when they could not see him with their eyes. In today’s Bible Story, Jesus will show himself again to his disciples, and it will happen in a very unusual way. Simon Peter said he was going fishing, and six of the disciples said they would go with him. They got into a boat and started fishing right away, but they couldn’t catch any fish. In fact, they fished all night and they didn’t catch a thing. When daylight came they were probably very discouraged, very tired, and very hungry. I know because I have fished many times without catching any fish, and night fishing can be especially tiring. Probably when they were about ready to give up, the disciples saw someone standing on the shore. The man asked them if they had caught anything. When they answered that they had not, he told them to throw their net on the right side of the boat and they would catch some fish. Who was this person standing on the shore? Do you know who he was? The disciples did as the man told them, and they caught so many fish in their net that they could not pull it back into the boat. It was a miracle! John then realized that the man standing on the shore was Jesus, and Peter got so excited that he jumped out of the boat and swam to the shore as fast as he could to be with Jesus. When they pulled in the net there were 153 very big fish, and that’s when they had breakfast with Jesus. Jesus already had a fire started with fish cooking and some bread, and he said to them. “Come and dine.”