by Marcia Sanders
“Nana, I think Thomas got a raw deal!” David exclaimed.
David’s grandmother smiled. “How’s that?”
“Well, he got labeled ‘Doubting Thomas,’ but the others doubted too. I was just reading about the Resurrection in the Gospels, and none of the disciples believed Jesus had risen when the women told them.”
“What do you make of that?” Nana asked.
“Well,” David pondered, “I guess their faith wasn’t strong enough. But they had seen Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead. And Jesus told them that He’d be in the ground three days. So shouldn’t it be easy to believe, since they’d been with Jesus when He did these things and taught that stuff?”
“Have you ever listened carefully to your teacher’s lesson, but then find you can’t remember all that she said during that class?” Nana asked.
David grimaced. “Well, sure. All too often.”
“Now think about how much the disciples were learning from Jesus, how many new ideas He shared. Is it reasonable to think they might have forgotten some of the things He taught?”
“I guess so,” David conceded. “But what about all the miracles they saw — even Lazarus being raised from the dead? Shouldn’t that have told them it was possible?”
“And Who was doing all of these miracles?” Nana queried.
“Uh, Jesus,” David muttered. “I see what you’re getting at. They depended on Jesus to do the miracles, and they had seen Him die that horrible death, so they probably kinda lost hope.”
Nana smiled. “I think that’s a safe assumption. Everything was so new to the disciples. They had faithfully followed Jesus, believed all He taught them. But when left on their own — or so they thought — they were frightened and lost their focus.”
“Maybe their own faith hadn’t really developed,” David said. “They were depending more on what they could actually see.”
“It’s like a baby living off the mother’s body before birth,” Nana explained. “Then, after birth, the baby has to live independent of her. Hebrews 11:1 says that faith is the evidence of things not seen. The disciples were deep in the ‘not seen’ part. How would that change things?”
“Well, they couldn’t rely on watching Jesus teach or perform a miracle. They had to believe that what He had said would happen, even if they didn’t understand how it could be. That would be really tough, I guess.”
“But the disciples learned from their mistake,” Nana reminded David. “Think about all that happened in the rest of the New Testament. How much stronger they were in believing, carrying the gospel to other places — even when it meant being persecuted for what they taught.”
“I guess that’s the important part, huh?” David grinned. “Our faith grows when we admit our mistakes and learn from them.”
