I think it is true to say that blessings come to us while we are busy and not when we are idle. While doing their humble jobs (mending nets) these men received the Lord’s visit and a special blessing. The Lord’s special calls to some special task come to men who are already engaged in the way of their humble daily occupation. Moses was tending his father-in-law's sheep, when he saw the burning bush, and heard the voice that commissioned him. David’s calling was similar, Psalm 78:71, “From following the ewes great with young he brought him to feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance.” Gideon was threshing wheat by the winepress, when the Angel of the Lord bade him “save Israel from the hand of the Midianites." Elisha was "ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen before him, and he with the twelfth," when Elijah passed by and cast his mantle upon him. Matthew was sitting at the receipt of custom when the Lord called him to be an Apostle. All this shows how God approves of His people in their secular callings. How He notices and loves honest-hearted work, whether it be physical or mental, simple or skilled. We don’t have to say farewell to our work to meet God. The Lord meets us in our work. As Keble the poet put it:

"We need not bid, for cloistered cell,

Our neighbour and our work farewell,

Nor strive to wind ourselves too high

For sinful man beneath the sky.

The trivial round, the common task,

Would furnish all we ought to ask;

Room to deny ourselves; a road