I was blessed in my childhood to have parents who were willing to believe me when there was no external evidence for what I was complaining about. Around the time I was 9, I started occasionally experiencing extreme pain in the back of knees that would keep me awake. I remember nights when I know they were tired and frustrated, but they never questioned my pain and always worked to find ways to alleviate it, even though all the doctors ever said was “must be growing pains.”

They went through that experience again when I had severe headaches at age 13. It turned out that those were due to a (benign) bone tumor above my left eye, and the physical reality eventually became obvious. I’d wake up in not much pain with my eye nearly swollen shut. By bedtime, the swelling would be almost gone and the pain would be intense. However, my parents didn’t need the physical proof before they treated my pain as a real thing.

I’ve sometimes wondered why they never questioned the reality of my invisible ailments. I’ve never asked, and I think they may not know. I suspect that it was about their relationship with me and their trust in me. They knew I didn’t have a habit of complaining about pain. They couldn’t see physical evidence of the cause of the pain, but they could see the evidence of the pain in my behavior in each of the circumstances I’ve mentioned.

We have been asked to have this kind of relationship with and trust in Jesus. 

After his resurrection, Jesus had appeared to most of the disciples, but not to Thomas. While we fault Thomas for his reaction to the stories about Christ’s resurrection, he had some excuse to think that his friends had all lost their minds. Jesus came back from the dead; that’s hard to swallow. Importantly, Jesus doesn’t condemn Thomas. He shows the proof that it’s really him. After Thomas acknowledges Jesus as Lord and God, we see Christ’s response.

Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29 ESV)

To me, Jesus sounds a bit disappointed here. This is one of his disciples, a man who has been by his side and learning from him for most of his ministry. He failed to recognize the truth of the resurrection, the truth of who Jesus was, until he saw.

Yet, there is no condemnation. Jesus invites Thomas to look, and to do more than look; he invites Thomas to come to know him better. 

We shouldn’t be surprised that Jesus treats Thomas and his need to actually see Christ gently. We see God responding kindly to requests for assurance in the Old Testament as well. In Judges 6, we see Gideon asking God for a sign that he’s really been called to save the Israelites from their current oppressors. He leaves a fleece out on the ground at night and asks God to make it wet and every around it dry, and that happens. Then Gideon starts thinking about it and decides that that was too easy. “Then Gideon said to God, ‘Let not your anger burn against me; let me speak just once more. Please let me test just once more with the fleece. Please let it be dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground let there be dew’” (Judges 6:39 ESV). And God does it. The next morning, the fleece is dry and the ground is covered with dew.

Despite his graciousness with our need for certainty, God still wants to grow so that we don’t always need to see first. When the Israelites are fleeing Egypt, Moses holds out his staff and the Red Sea parts and only after the water is out of the way do the Israelites cross. But later on when the people go to cross the Jordan, the waters don’t part until after the priests step into the swollen river (Joshua 3:13-17). God expects Israel (or at least their leadership) to have learned to trust him during the forty years they have spent depending on him while wandering about in the wilderness.

We often take that last sentence Jesus speaks to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed,” as an instruction to us and praise for us, as the people who have not seen Christ on earth. However, I think it’s more than that. I think Jesus is saying that those who come to know and trust him to the point that they do not need to see what he is doing in order to believe are inherently blessed.

If we know Jesus well enough, we do have joy in times of great sorrow and pain. If we understand God’s sovereignty and his love for us, we don’t despair when everything seems lost. The knowledge and trust that allow us to believe when we can’t see what God is doing are, in and of themselves, the blessing.

Of course, there’s no quick and easy solution to being able to believe what we can’t see. Relationships and trust are built over time. We can only take the time in prayer and Bible study and trust that God will reveal himself and his character to us over time, enabling us to become those who believe more and more, even when we can’t see.

 

Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash