My Dad is struggling. Old age is not a puny battle. And watching him reminds me of the harshness of this life, and it's end. It is right now that the need for more becomes very apparent. It's where God's promise of a forever life, full of strength and health and wholesome goodness, becomes something our hearts ache for. And my heart begs for it to be real. You heard that right! Sometimes I struggle with the thought that it might not be! What if everything I've lived my life for all these years, is based on a storyline someone created years ago, just to give us something to cling to? To give us the hope our hearts crave. What if it's not real...? I need it to be real! And as I drove to work one morning this week, I was crying out to him - "God, please be real! I need you to be real! I need all that you have promised us to be real!" And a few things filtered through to me - things I've written before about why I believe. Things like the incredible complexity and vastness of creation - and how I cannot believe it could have just happened all by itself! Things like how beautiful and good the principles it teaches me are, and how much he has guided my life in better ways than I tend to go by myself. Things like that Jesus is historical fact, and no-one would choose what he chose to go through without good cause! That thought led to wishing I could have been there - seeing what the disciples saw. Thinking that they had a real advantage with their believing, being with the one who showed God to us on earth! And then it occurred to me that their struggle with faith was a little different, but still very real! They were looking at a man! Just like you and me! A next door neighbour! Who claimed to be the son of God! Who did amazing things! 'The One' they'd been told for centuries would be coming to rescue their nation! Imagine if that happened in our day! Someone just like you and me starts wandering around claiming to be God, with a rescue plan. We'd call him a nut case! And those amazing things he did - we'd say he was in league with the devil who was doing things to deceive us! Yes, the disciples had their own faith struggle. That motley little band of followers had to figure out if it was all real too!! And then he ended up hanging like a criminal! We have the gift of hind sight! We can see how his hope and his story have spread! Pretty amazing, considering how they started! Imagine what it looked like through their eyes! They'd been told to share that message with the whole world! And there were so few of them! And the threat for sharing it hung heavy in the air! Faith was hard for them too. But when it's hard for us, God doesn't just shake his head and walk away. When Thomas said he wouldn't believe in a risen Jesus unless he could touch his wounds for himself and know they were real - Jesus offered that very thing to him. And do you know what he gave me? Twice that day, a verse from the Bible was placed in front of me. From two different sources. And out of the hundreds of verses written there, there came this... "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." John 20:29 And it made me cry. Because I know he's real. And I know he hears me. And he's always been there for me. And his promises are real. And they're real for my Dad too ❤
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