Bidden or Unbidden, God is Present

"Although the doors were locked, Jesus came." The existence of God does not depend on our faith, or certainty, or our goodness, or our firm and constant understanding. God is. God comes - even through closed doors, barred in fear. God comes. As one writer explains, "I didn't experience him so much as the hound of heaven, as the old description has it, but as the alley cat of heaven, who seemed to believe that if it just keeps showing up , mewling outside your door, you'd eventually open up and give him a bowl of milk. "

Many of us can attest to periods of our lives that have felt like a perpetual Good Friday - shaken, on the heels of loss, tragedy, great suffering, we grieve. Thomas is a Good Friday man - a man disillusioned by grief, pressed down on by the simple uncertainty of the human condition. He is not present to receive Christ's benediction of breath, that in it left no room for doubt. He who had hung on the cross and died now breathes the sweet transforming breath on his disciples.

How is Thomas to believe in such a thing as resurrection, of new breath, after witnessing such pain?

Thomas was brought to belief by putting his hand in the side of Christ - the open fleshly wound of Christ's suffering. Thomas was brought to belief not by avoiding intimate contact with the horror of Christ's suffering, but by placing his hand in Christ's side and touching suffering, feeling the openness with his own hand. It shadows Christ's own journey - Christ enduring the tight tension of suffering and being transformed by it. Both Christ and Thomas are resurrected through and by the wound. How does eternal life come to Christ through suffering, and faith to Thomas through the wound of Christ?

In that question lies the mystery of the resurrection. From death comes life, who lay without breath walk again. And it is THE mystery, the thing of greatest wonder, inexplicable, ineffable. The greatest contrary life-giving conundrum, that proves itself true, again and again from the littlest to the grandest way in our own lives. (Resurrection happens - it is not hinged on our belief in it, but are blessed by our belief.) Like the alley cat, life comes around, and around again, even though it may in appearance be like the alley cat, thin from eating just scraps, matted fur, maybe a tooth or two misplaced, but purring and rubbing against our legs none the less.

What then quickens our faith under the hard weight of our personal suffering? Because we are all Thomas - grieved, skeptical, weary, tired, perplexed, left out. And often our hearts do not quicken in hope and in faith until our fingertips have been bloodied by the mystery of our own sufferings. Until we have dug a bottom so deep, our finger nails crack.

But whether we dig or not, bleed or not, before we have had our first heart ache, our first broken bone, lost our first loved one, felt our first big disappointment - the one that leaves you with a gut ache, doubled over in bed. nChrist has already healed us, has already mended our brokenness, and promised us the sweet breath of life, once and for all, again and again.

Blessed are those who remember this promise, as God and sense and meaning recede into the storm of our human plights. Blessed are those who recall this promise in the instant their lives are touched by the unspeakable. Blessed are those who have known great cruelty but still expect even greater kindnesses. "Blessed are those who believe but have not seen."