Believing without Seeing
John 4:43-54
“And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.
‘Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders,’ Jesus told him, ‘you will never believe.’ The royal official said, ‘Sir, come down before my child dies.’ ” John 4:46-49 NIV
How often this happens in the Gospels. Jesus is one place and someone wants him to go another place in order to help or heal another person…usually a loved one. And it seems that it must have gotten tiresome for Jesus to repeat frequently that we do not need to see to believe…well, I would have become tired. Or as He put it in this passage, “Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders, you will never believe.” But He, of course, healed the boy.
What is the point of this story for us? What needs to happen with us before we will believe? Do we also need to see in order to believe? I think many of us do. We are much more comfortable with something that is concrete…in many ways. If we can see something, hear it, feel it, smell it, or taste it, we can easily believe in the object, concept, or religion.
But if we would look, we would see all kinds of miracles which Jesus performs. They happen around us all the time. Isn’t it a miracle that you are living at all? How did that come about?
How is it that human beings haven’t been able to destroy the Bible after all of these years of war, turmoil, chaos. It isn’t because they haven’t tried to get rid of the Bible. There have been real efforts by some to reduce the Bible to a group of myths and people who are caricatures. Why hasn’t that worked after years and years of trying to rid the world of it?
Purely and simply it is because God is alive. He lives within and through us. He walks beside us. God is everywhere whether a person believes it or not. Jesus wants us to believe without seeing. In order to do that there would have to be nothing to see. I don’t know about anyone else, but I find thousands of things to see in people, in nature, in the expanse of the universes, in outer as well as inner space.
We are blessed. If we open our eyes, we will see and believe. If we stand still with our eyes close, we will still see. We are standing there as the Beloved children of God.
Carol
Bible Breath: Believing / Without seeing
