I think Thomas, the Apostle, has been given a bad rap.  He is known best for his declaration that he would believe that Jesus was alive when he could touch Him for himself. 

We quote Jesus, after offering Thomas His hands and side, saying “…blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”  That’s you and me, obviously.

 That makes perfect sense.  Jesus is no longer walking the earth in human form.  All of us who have come to saving faith have come by, well,  faith. 

Should Thomas have believed his fellows when they told him Jesus had risen from the dead?  Probably.  He had been a disciple for a while and should have known whom he could trust.  Of course there was that Judas business, but still…

 According to the text, it does seem that Jesus reproves him a bit:  “Because you have seen, you have believed…”

 Let’s go back a few verses in John 21.

 I don’t see where any of the disciples believed Mary of Magdala when she told them she had seen the Lord.

 Sunday evening the disciples,  minus Thomas and Judas,  were huddled in fear in a locked room when Jesus stood among them.  Mind you, He’d come in without knocking and it doesn’t say He had the key.  He showed them His hands and His side, and then the record says,  “The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.”

 Did they believe without seeing?  I don’t know.  I’m just asking, but they did see.  Jesus did show Himself to them.

 What else do we know about Thomas?

 In John 11 it is recorded that when Jesus announced His intention of going to the Jerusalem area, brushing aside the protests of His disciples that His life was in danger there, Thomas said to the others: “Let us also go, that we may die with Him.”

He may have been skeptical, but he was commited enough to Jesus that he was willing to die with Him if need be.

Christian tradition holds that Thomas preached the gospel in India and was martyred there,  killed by a spear. For that reason, artists often paint him with a spear.  Indian Believers commonly call themselves “St. Thomas Christians,” descendants of the Apostle’s converts. Thomas left an indelible imprint on the people of an entire continent.

 There’s so much we cannot know about this follower of Jesus, but what seems certain to me is that he loved the Lord and followed Him with his whole heart, eventually laying down his life for the Good News. 

 Jesus’ words, “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed,” are often used,  it seems to me,  as an excuse by those who have never had a personal encounter with the living Christ.  True visions are extremely rare, and most of us will never have one of those, but we can press in until we actually experience Christ-life at work in us.

 “Doubting Thomas” would not settle for only the testimony of others.  He insisted on a personal touch from Jesus. I think we would do well to emulate his passion for truth.

When a friend invited me to share my thoughts on the difference Christ makes in how I see myself,  I jumped at the chance.  I thought that as endlessly self-focused as I am, and considering my many years of knowing Jesus, I would be writing volumes. This was harder than I expected.

Christ made a difference in my life. Christ continues to make a difference in all aspects of my life. 

As I ponder this, I take myself back to early childhood memories and I wonder if how I saw myself then was based on my sin nature or was it childlike innocence?  

I don’t think it was about my self-image when, at six years old, I wondered why the miracles in the stories my Sunday school teacher told me were not happening around me.  I knew Jesus was, is always and ever shall be, and that nothing had changed about his power. 

Jesus loved me the way I was, but he loved me too much to leave me that way. Cliche, certainly, but still true. I see myself as depressive, pretentious, outspoken, too nervous, too introspective, too sinful, too paranoid (although I wonder if it is really paranoia when one’s suppositions are accurate) too scatter-brained, too impatient, too lazy, too fat—just generally too too human. 

But here’s the over-riding truth: God most high, he who by his spoken word and outstretched arm created the earth, the skies and seas, and all that in them dwell, made himself known to me! As far back as when I was six years old, I knew him. 

He’s changing me, by the power of his Spirit; he’s changing me so that I can begin to see a glimpse of how he sees me. I praise him for continuing to be intimately and intricately involved in my life, even after all these years. 

Once when I was frustrated and crying in the Chaplain’s office, he said,  in moment of kindness, “Elaine, if you didn’t care you’d be of no use to God.” 

I’m beginning to see myself as one created by God, uniquely and strangely suited for the work and life he has cut out for me. I often pray that he will sow all of my passion and tears into the Kingdom. I thank him that he knows I am dust even though I find it hard to accept that. I pray he will take my of-the-earth earthiness and put it to good use. He is still changing me and making himself known to me. 

I see myself as one for whom Christ died.  That gives me value.

On a recent Sunday, during our Gap pre-service prayer time, our pastor pointed to a Bible reference on the screen and asked us to consider the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal.

It’s a wonderful story in I Kings 18. God’s man Elijah was fed up with King Ahab disrespecting him and mocking the Lord, so he said, in essence, “Okay, let’s have a showdown!”

The next thing you know, 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of the goddess Asherah turn up at Mount Carmel for the confrontation. As instructed, they brought two bulls, one for them and one for Elijah.

They killed their bull and cut it up into pieces, as did Elijah, and placed the pieces on the wood, but “Don’t light the fire,” Elijah told them. The idea was that whichever sacrifice was consumed in fire would prove who was God.

Here’s where it gets interesting:

Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal. “Since there are so many of you, you take a bull and prepare it first. Pray to your god, but don’t set fire to the wood.”

They prepared bull and prayed to Baal until noon. They shouted. “Answer us. Baal!” and kept dancing around the altar they had built. But no answer came.

Elijah became positively scathing. “Yell louder! Maybe you need to wake him up—he could be daydreaming. Or maybe he is off somewhere relieving himself.”

No matter what they did—crying louder, cutting themselves and making themselves bleed—nothing happened. No fire, not even a spark. This went on until late in the afternoon.

Finally Elijah urged the people to come near to him. He rebuilt the altar of the Lord with twelve stones, representing the twelve tribes of Israel. He instructed them to build a trench around the altar, and then positioned the pieces of the bull on the wood. When he had done so, he ordered the whole thing doused in water. Three times he had the altar, the wood and the bull drenched.

At the hour of the afternoon sacrifice Elijah approached the altar and prayed, “O LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, prove now that you are the God of Israel, and that I am your servant and have done all this at your command. Answer me, LORD; answer me, so that this people will know that you, the LORD, are God and that you are bringing them back to yourself.”

The LORD sent fire, burning up the sacrifice, the wood, and the stones, scorched the earth and dried up the water in the trench.

When the people saw this, they threw themselves on the ground and exclaimed. “The LORD is God; the LORD alone is God!”

Isn’t that a great story? I think so. I’ve heard the story since childhood, and I’ve always known it was wonderful, but this last hearing truly impressed me.

One day as I was praying, I cried out to God, “Oh LORD! I know you are God. You alone are God. I am fierce in my love for you and my faith in you. I’m bringing you my petitions and LORD I want the faith of Elijah. I’m asking for fire to come down from Heaven to deal with the issues I’m bringing you today. I am fierce in my love for my children and grandchildren, and they have needs!”

Now, let me be clear: I do not hear voices. I have never heard the audible voice of God except when he speaks through other humans. What I receive are impressions, and over my many years, I recognize them as God speaking to me. The only way I can convey what I am receiving from him is to paraphrase in my own language, and here is what I believe was God’s answer to my audacious prayer:

First I should say that I had the sense that he chuckled. “I guess you are a bit like Elijah, aren’t you? You’ve had real miracles in your life and yet I see you off in a corner feeling sorry for yourself. You feel all alone and abandoned and convinced somebody is wishing you ill.”

Ah. Yes. It was AFTER the big blowout on Mount Carmel, mind you, when Elijah was sitting under a broom tree wanting to die. He says he has been zealous for the Kingdom, and it all seemed as if it had been for nothing.

Here is how wonderful, gracious and loving God was to Elijah: He spoke to Elijah. Not in the wind and not in the earthquake, and not in the fire, but in a whisper. God was so close to his servant that Elijah could hear him whisper.

Oh, I connect with Elijah on so many levels.

Absent any information to the contrary, I’m going to assume Elijah was an older fellow, say about 71 years old—after all, he’d been at this prophet business quite a while.

He was human. We tend to forget that about the holy people in the Bible, but his taunt that Baal might be relieving himself was quite earthy. I have been known to make earthy statements myself. I am working on that.

He could confidently say he did his best—he poured his heart into his ministry—and the results were disappointing. He felt unappreciated. He felt outnumbered and alone.

He was outnumbered 950 to one, but HE served the Living God! That knocks me out! The 950 were whooping and hollering to non-existence.

Think of it! We humans are living on Planet Earth in the year 2011 A.D., AFTER the Advent, mind you! Like Elijah we might be outnumbered, but we are never alone. How confident we may be that God is with us. God hears. God cares!

The Eternal Weight of Glory

     The shine on my old oak kitchen table is missing in spots. My grandmother’s table once sat, either covered with canning jars or neglected, in a corner of her basement. She had promised me I could have it someday, but apparently forgot because I had to buy it at the auction after she died.

     I further sealed my ownership of it by restoring the finish to an oatey-golden patina, so the table is three times mine, really. It could use another coat or two of tung oil and a good rubbing.

     The areas of dimmed luster are elbow-resting positions and careless coffee-cup sites, worn there as much from talking sessions as from meal times. Something about a round table invites family and friends to share our ideas, silly or solemn.

     Around this table we debated whether it was better to use cloth or disposable diapers, if we should send our kids to public schools or private; should we change our hair color or not, and of course we complained about our husbands’ failure to understand how complicated our lives were. We usually forgot what we’d decided as soon as someone introduced another topic.

     Lately the subjects of our discussions mirror newspaper headlines and center, not on vague somebodies out there, but on those we love; our babies who have progressed from smearing cereal on highchair trays to resting big hairy arms on the table.

     How we wept with Jan when she found out her 16-year-old daughter was pregnant! Jacquie’s daughter had an abortion. Carol worries that her son may be involved in drugs. Ruth’s husband left her for a woman at his office. My son-in-law, a hemophiliac, died of AIDS last year. Even violent crime has touched some of us. Now our conversation often serves only to provide a temporary respite to the real anguish in our hearts.

     “Heavy,” my husband declares, as we come in to our kitchen after church. “Life has become so heavy.” With typical male economy of words, he sums up the thoughts whirling around in my head during morning worship service.

     The table is clear again; I’ve tidied up after our lunch of chili and crackers, and I open my Bible to consider this matter of weight and time. I remember the passage, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not on the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” II Corinthians 4:16-18 NASB

     An eternal weight of glory…temporary…light and momentary troubles. What do you mean, Paul? Certainly what my friends and I are facing is not light even if it may be temporary. And what is the eternal (timeless) weight (heaviness) of glory?

     “It will be worth it all, when we see Jesus…” The chorus of an old song comes to mind, but as comforting and encouraging as the idea might be, I sense something more profound in “the eternal weight of glory.”

     Paul obviously understood a principle I still struggle to comprehend: Christ’s power is perfected in my weakness. The very fact that I am weak and foolish and unable by and of myself to extricate myself from troubles, or even learn from them proves by contrast the wonderfulness of Jesus.

     The inevitable physical losses of getting old, the failure of our best intentions and the loss of our dreams, the sinister encroaching of enemy filth and sickness into the lives of our clean, healthy, loved and prayed-over children serve the purposes of God when we let them work in us character, perseverance, strength…faith. We don’t give up, Paul says. We don’t lose our confidence that God is good, God hears and answers prayer, God loves us and receives back home his wandering children.

     Our afflictions are temporary. No, some things will never be the same, but in the sense that we are only sojourners in this life, what we endure here is temporary. And God is able, by his supernatural restoring power, to make our troubles seem light, at least in retrospect. He has a way of showing us a backward glance and giving us grace to say, “It was worth it all.” And in the times when we don’t yet have that grace, when we’re not sure it was worth it all, we have the testimony of those who have walked this way before us, and they insist they wouldn’t trade a minute of trouble for the place they found in God because of their struggle.

     This momentary affliction works in us the Christ life, the eternal weight of glory. What we’ve lost, whether we’ve chosen to release it or it was taken from us, was temporary. What we’ve gained is eternal.

The old table creaks as I lift my head off my folded hands. My season of understanding is fleeting, too, amid the hum of everyday life. There were other times I grasped something of the eternal, and I suppose I permitted it to be worn away, like the shine on the table.

I need several light coats of oil and lots of rubbing. His loving hand is heavy sometimes, but the Master Craftsman is patient. His work lasts!