Every year, it seems, Thomas the Twin, one of Jesus’ disciples, gets a bad rap the second Sunday of Easter. Every year, it seems, we Christians focus on Thomas’ doubt, his deep, heart-wrenching questions about the events of Golgotha. Behind his back we shake our heads and tsk-tsk even though, deep in our hearts, we suspect we might have joined him in his desperate solitude those hours after the crucifixion. Although all of us at one time or another have felt abandoned and bereft, alone in a dark room as waves of doubt wash over us, it is not a place or a posture we seek.
However, there are discoveries about ourselves, revelations of truth about who we are and whose we are that come to us after hours of silence in a dark room. They are the gifts of doubt, and painful and frightening as they may be, they are to be embraced as the gifts that lead us to newness.
These things did Thomas hold for real:
The warmth of blood, the chill of steel,
the grain of wood, the heft of stone,
the last frail twitch of blood and bone.
His brittle certainties denied
That one could live when one had died,
until his fingers read like Braille
the markings of the spear and nail.
May we, O God, by grace believe
And, in believing, still receive
the Christ who held His raw palms out
and beckoned Thomas from his doubt.
(Thomas Troeger, Psalter/Hymnal of the Christian Reformed Church)
May we pray for the gifts of doubt:
Almighty and everliving God, who didst strengthen thine apostle Thomas with sure and certain faith in thy Son’s resurrection: Grant us so perfectly and without doubt to believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God, that our faith may never be found wanting in thy sight; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.