On Revelation: Take it as it Comes...

I learned something today from the man the world has come to call “doubting Thomas.” First, let's get one thing clear; Thomas was not the slacker disciple. When Christ announced to the disciples that he would go back through Jerusalem to visit Lazarus’s sisters, all the disciples worried that he wouldn’t make it through alive. It was Thomas who said “let us go also, and die with him.” This was a man with a testimony.

On that first Easter morning, when Christ showed himself to the apostles, bearing witness of the resurrection and calling them to share the good news, "Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them...The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the prints of the nails and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe." [John 20:24-25]

Thomas had in mind how it would go. He expected the revelation to come in a certain way and could not or would not accept it as it came. He eventually got exactly the witness he was expecting, but what did he miss in those eight days? What do we miss?

I believe we have a choice to accept revelation—that we can choose to see and to claim insights, light, love and assurance that come to us in many different ways; through the scriptures, through music, nature, even other people, for the revelations they really are.