Day 8 (The Twelve Days of Christmas)

John 20:26

“Eight days later the disciples were together again, and this time Thomas was with them. The doors were locked; but suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them. ‘Peace be with you,’ he said.” John 20:26

Have you ever heard the parable of the drowning man?

It is about a man who is stuck on his roof after a flood and prays to God for help. While he waits, another man on a rowboat comes by offering help, but he turns it down. Then a motorboat comes by, and he again turns it down. Finally a helicopter comes by, offering a rope to pull him to safety but he again turns down the help, saying, “God will save me!” But then the helicopter flies away, the water rises, and the man drowns.

When he gets to heaven, the man asks God, “why didn’t you save me?!” and God says, “I sent you a rowboat, a motorboat, and a helicopter!”

When I think about this man, I wonder what he was picturing. What did he imagine help from God was going to look like, if not boats and a helicopter?

But then, what do we imagine as answers to our own prayers?

Often when we pray for something we have a picture of it in our minds, whether that’s a future spouse, a place to live, a job, a vacation, a child, etc. Our imaginations can run wild based on things we’ve always wanted, things we never got, things we’ve seen on television, and now, things we see other people experiencing on social media.

We cling tightly to the infamous THIS, and struggle when we don’t see it take the shape we expect.

Sometimes we have such a clear picture of what we want God to do in our lives that we put the blinders on, making it impossible for us to see where and how He acts. Which is the case of the drowning man.

We want to see God’s work through OUR eyes, understand it on our terms, watch it unfold on our timeline and as a result, we might miss the miracles God is doing in our lives.

In John 20, Jesus appears to his disciples after his death, but Thomas is not among those who are there. So when they tell him that they’ve seen Jesus, he doesn’t believe them.

“I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.” (verse 25)

It is a challenge not only to the disciples, but to Jesus himself. It’s a prove it moment that we all come across in our lives. But Jesus doesn’t appear on command. He hears Thomas’s doubt, surely, but doesn’t just walk in the door, like, “SEE?!”

Instead, he waits eight days.

Eight days!!

Can you imagine how it must have felt for Thomas to see and hear his friends talk at length about seeing Jesus? Surely he asked more than once, why not me?

Why not me? Why not us? Why don’t we see God acting in our lives the same way he is acting in others?

But then, is he really not acting in our lives or is he just acting in different ways?

Maybe he’s untying different knots, pulling together different pieces, laying the groundwork for a different path that is better designed to the lives we were meant to live.

Eight days later, Jesus appears to the disciples again while Thomas is there and says, “Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!” (verse 27)

Then in verse 29, Jesus says, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.”

It will always be easier to see the ways God is acting in the lives of others, both because we have an outsider’s perspective and, with things like social media and television, we have 24/7 access to the lives of (too many) other people.

Sometimes we will feel like the disciples who saw Jesus and other times we will feel like Thomas in those eight days of doubt.

Regardless, God asks that we believe in him. That we trust he is at work in our lives even when we can’t see it. He hears when we cry out on our proverbial rooftops, and he will send help—even if it’s in a way we might not expect.

So let’s train our eyes on looking for God in all his colors, shapes and sizes, and train our faith to stay active, even in seasons of waiting.