Much is made of the disciple we call "Doubting Thomas". People over the centuries have used his name as a spiritual "Post-It" to label anyone whose faith seems to be wavering in the face of unheard-of circumstances. The spiritually smug stand back and upbraid the struggler as somehow defective in their faith.

Truth is...ALL the disciples didn't believe Mary Magdalene or the other women who were eye witnesses to Jesus Resurrection. They all thought the women had gone bonkers. Peter and John, Bartholomew, Thaddeus, Matthew and the rest all doubted.
Of course they did. What the women told them was inconceivable! It is so hard not to make our own experience of the Lord as some sort of template or measuring rod by which we determine the hardiness of another disciple's faith. What we have been told is beyond human reason. God became a man, lived a sinless life, was shredded and crucified, died and was buried. Then, on the third day after His death, He is raised from the dead with a new kind of flesh and bone body: a Resurrection body, human, yes, but infinitely extraordinary!

Try this on...Jesus has told us that "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." Any moments of doubt over that one? Wait a minute! Jesus is telling His disciples, His followers throughout the remainder of time that we are going to live life and do ministry just as Jesus did? We are supposed to know the Father's will as He did? We are going to be guided and empowered by the Holy Spirit as He was? That's exactly what Jesus was saying.

He didn't say it was to be the call upon an elite few but all His disciples. There were 120 in the upper-room on Pentecost and not all of them were Apostles or men over 30 years of age! This is astounding! Those who follow Jesus are to begin to live a way that is massively radical. That radical is to become the normal for any Christian in any age.

To me, on the whole, the church has been more remiss that Thomas ever was. When he saw Jesus, he fell down and called Him who He is, "My Lord and my God!" They didn't seem to question Jesus' words about them being sent by Jesus as the Father had sent Him. They continued to believe that Jesus' life and ministry was to continue to be lived in and through them so that people might be rescued from sin and find their lives transformed.

There is a question for us...how shall we then live, given this is all true?