How blessed are those who do not see, but trust anyway!

Thomas said to Him, "My Lord and My God!"

John 20:24-29

Sometimes we need proof to believe something - tangible evidence to accept a situation, theory or assertion because we have no previous experience of it, or it does not conform with our world view as it has been shaped by our culture and education; or it simply contradicts everything we had ever been taught.

For Thomas, the concept of life beyond the physical death was like that. In the context of the culture in which he lived, and the world in which he had been raised, life after death would have been understood either to happen in the time of what the Pharisee's called Olam Ha-Ba [The World to Come - the time of the messiah, when He comes to initiate perfect peace and prosperity]; or would have been considered impossible. The Sadducee's rejected the very notion of life after death, and if Thomas had been raised in that tradition, the resurrection of Christ would have come as a quite a shock.

Thomas is (famously) the doubter, but in the context of the culture in which he had been shaped and formed, from where he had drawn his early understandings of the world around him and the religion he practised, we can perhaps better understand both his doubts, and our own.

For at that moment when he is invited to put his fingers to Christ's hand and wounded side, Olam Ha-Ba is before him, in the flesh; after the disciples had lived through the ordeal of accusations, the betrayal of Judas, the denouncements at the trail at which many had bayed for the blood of Jesus for his 'blasphemy', when many had said repeatedly that Jesus was not the messiah and the disciples must surely have been mocked - to have Jesus stood before him, having been killed on the cross, resurrected, living again - his passionate cry and previous doubts are more understandable. In the eyes of Thomas 'the world to come' has arrived now.

Perfect peace is given to him because God has taken the trouble to come to him and show him that his faith was not un-warranted; God Himself is stood before him and reassuring him: this is God's love and Grace, His gift to Thomas and every disciple in the room with Thomas.

And then Christ, God in flesh, reminds Thomas that having been so blessed that there will be those who trust in this resurrection, who have yet to come but will not see with their own eyes - and they will be still more blessed.

In moments when you struggle to see Jesus - to feel him in your prayers, to find him in your day to day life - draw hope from Thomas' story: for even when you struggle to see, your trust is blessed. God's Grace and Love are with you, and He does not withhold from you the reassurance that you seek. Your doubts and fears are as much part of your journey as they were part of Thomas'. Know that you blessed today.