Second Sunday of Easter - John 20:19-31

Thomas was the hard case. He wasn't satisfied to accept Jesus' resurrection second hand. He wanted evidence. Jesus obliged him.

All of us have people like Thomas in our lives, people we love who are skeptics.  They may not have had the benefit of a childhood faith. The joy we have found in following Christ is a mystery to them, or even an annoyance. If God is a loving Father and Christ is alive, you couldn't prove it to them. Their experiences in life have done more to prove the opposite. What will open their eyes?

Our doubter friends can feel overwhelmed by the suffering they see and experience personally. People have broken their promises and broken their hearts. Religion has been something oppressive or merely ritualistic or just boring. Yet we love them and long to share the Good News with them. 

We also have times when God seems absent, and we feel a longing for certainty and proof. This Sunday's gospel reminds us that God is very near, when when unseen. The story of Thomas shows us that Jesus comes to meet us in our doubts and questions, not waiting until we have things neatly figured out and explained scientifically. If Christ can honor the rumblings of new faith in the doubter's questions, so may we recognize how hope is stirring in our own Thomases.

What can we do to show Christ to our friends struggling to have faith? What evidence will they see in our lives?