I Am With You Always

Do you remember the wonderful story of Easter? It starts with Palm Sunday, when the Lord rode into Jerusalem as a King. Then wicked people had the Lord taken away and crucified. Can you imagine how the disciples must have felt then? They must have felt terribly sad, and wondered what had happened. You see, even though the Lord had told His disciples that He would rise again, they did not understand.

And then it seemed that the Lord was dead, and He was put in a sepulcher, which was like a big cave. A huge stone was rolled into the mouth of the sepulcher. Then, on the third day, on Easter Sunday, some women came to the sepulcher, and found the stone rolled away. An angel told them that the Lord had risen. The women went and told the disciples, and the disciples didn’t know what to think. But they were still frightened.

That night, ten of them were in a locked room. And the Lord came to them. He didn’t have to come through a door, He just appeared to them. He showed them that He really was alive and told them they didn’t have to worry. You can imagine how very happy the disciples were, because now they knew that their Lord really was God, because He could rise from the dead.

But the disciple Thomas was not there, and he couldn’t believe it when the others told him they had seen the Lord. Thomas was a good man, and he loved the Lord very much. But he just didn’t see how the Lord could rise from the dead. He said he had to see for himself before he would believe.

After eight days, the Lord came again, when Thomas was with all the other disciples. He spoke to Thomas, and said that he could touch the sores on His hands and put his hand into the hole in His side which the spear had made when He was killed. And then Thomas believed, and called Him “My Lord and my God.” Then the Lord said that Thomas should have believed without seeing.

Thomas had such a hard time believing that the Lord had risen because he didn’t really understand that the Lord was God, and he also didn’t know about heaven. He didn’t realize that actually the Lord lifts every one who dies up into the spiritual world, even as He Himself rose from the dead on Easter morning. It just didn’t seem possible to Thomas that the Lord could do this wonderful thing.

Now, we too might sometimes feel that the Lord can’t do some things. When we’re unhappy, we might think that the Lord can’t possibly make us happy. But, if the Lord says that He will help us and lead us to happiness, He will do it. The story of Thomas is a message to us not to doubt the power of the Lord, but to trust in Him. For He comes to us, just as He came to Thomas. He comes to us in His Word and asks for us to trust Him. That is the message the Lord gave to Thomas and the message He gives to us too. Trust in the Lord’s power and love.

Amen.