Someone said an optimist believes this is the best of all possible worlds while a pessimist fears this is true.
The Apostle Thomas was a pessimist. In the three places he speaks in the Gospel of John, he comes across as morose and resigned (John 11:16; John 14:5; John 20:24-25).
Thomas was a Christian Eeyore.
Remember him? In the Winnie the Pooh stories, he was the gray donkey with drooping ears and sad eyes and a tail that would often come off because it was held on by a thumbtack. Every other character looked on life with wonder and expectation and trust, but not Eeyore. There’s a scene in The House at Pooh Corner where Eeyore knocks at Christopher Robin’s door:
“Hallo, Eeyore,” said Christopher Robin, as he opened the door and came out. “How are you?”
“It’s snowing still,” said Eeyore gloomily.
“So it is.”
“And freezing.”
“Is it?”
“Yes,” said Eeyore. “However,” he said, brightening up a little, “we haven’t had an earthquake lately.”
Sounds like Thomas, doesn’t he?
But Thomas met Jesus gloriously alive a week after Jesus had been killed. “Stop doubting,” Jesus said to his disconsolate disciple, “Stop doubting and believe” (John 20:27). His gloom melted away, and Thomas exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!”
With his declaration at the end of the Gospel of John, we return full circle to the assertion that opens the book: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… [and] the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:1, 14).
It’s remarkable that the man who expressed the deepest doubts of anyone else in the Gospel of John ended up expressing the highest claim about Jesus of anyone else in the Gospel. How does that give you hope for your own doubting? How does that give you hope for the doubters you know and love?
Read about the man everyone calls “Doubting Thomas” in John 20:24-31, and then study the passage with us this Sunday at 10am!
--Tom
Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.