Jesus Through the Eyes of a Fisherwoman

“What would Jesus do?”

Remember that pop-culture phenomenon from a few years back? Lots of people wore “WWJD?” bracelets and T-shirts or slapped a sticker on their car bumper.

It’s too bad that such a deep and meaningful question has become better identified with trinkets and deprecating parody than with life-changing self-reflection.

We’ve sanitized the gospels.

To answer what Jesus would do requires a closer examination of the life He led and the gritty world in which He lived. He was a real man who walked among real men and women with real troubles.

Jesus touched the untouchables. He healed the sick. He fed the hungry. He loved the unloved. He forgave. He walked through dirt and mud to get from village to village around the Sea of Galilee. And the disciples were real men who struggled with questions and doubts.

Not many women can speak to the real world of flesh and blood and mud and water these men walked through like Leslie Leyland Fields can. She’s an author and a speaker, but she’s also worked with her husband, Duncan, as a commercial fisherwoman in Kodiak, Alaska for 40 years.

That experience enables her to lead people beyond the modern, clean, and sanitized ideas about Jesus through which so many of us filter our spirituality.

Leslie is with us in our studios for a program called “Following Jesus Through the Seas.” She talks about the struggles her marriage faced under the strain of the fishing industry in Alaska and having her family’s entire livelihood on the line every season.

She also discussed the rigors placed on her children at a young age to work the family business, and explains how those challenges have equipped them to handle life with strength and courage.

Leslie pulls us out of the “fairytale spiritual world” so many of us find appealing and makes it visceral. You’ll feel like your hands have been right next to Jesus in the fish and the slime and the gunk.

It’s all covered in her book, “Crossing the Waters: Following Jesus Through the Storms, the Fish, the Doubt, and the Seas.” Look for that in our online store and tune in to our conversation with Leslie on your local radio station, online, or on our free phone app.