Thomas

The Lord be with you!

Christ is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!

Let us prepare our hearts for study in God’s Word, using this Sunday’s Collect of the Day, which restates the unifying theme of this week’s readings.

Let us pray:
Almighty God, grant that we who have celebrated the Lord’s resurrection may by Your grace confess in our life and conversation that Jesus is Lord and God; through the same Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Acts 5:29–42
Look at verse 29! What gauntlet is this, that Peter and the other apostles have thrown down? “We must obey God rather than men!” Wow! Do we dare say something like that today? What if obeying God will make it harder on us? What if obeying God will bring us further pain? These apostles are careless; they don’t seem to care about their family members who suffer along with them, while they get dragged off into prison or worse for their boldness in preaching the Gospel. But if we do suffer for the sake of Jesus Christ, then these same apostles also teach us, that suffering is a high privilege. What matters the most is what Jesus accomplished for us. As Gamaliel advised his fellow Jews: if this is God’s work (and we know that it is) then there will be no way to stop it, ever. We live and survive now and forever thanks to this precious Word of truth!

1 Peter 1:3-9
Having various trials is nothing new for us. We will always have trials. We know that we must go through them. God’s Word from the Apostle Peter encourages us to be convinced that our trials test the genuineness of our faith. How does someone pass the test? How do we withstand the inevitable trials? We claim the inheritance to which we have been born. We have been baptized into God’s family, and that is more precious than gold or silver. This salvation is something we believe, not see—even though there will come a time of inexpressible joy when all will see it. Come, Lord Jesus and save us! Give us this joy that You have promised us!

John 20:19-31
This Easter reading says a lot about Thomas and his doubting. And there’s more. Thomas is absolutely correct about one thing: without the wounds of Jesus, not only he, but nobody ever will be able to believe. We need Jesus to come to us, just as He came to Thomas, just as He came to the 10 other disciples the week before, we need Jesus to come and announce Peace and forgiveness to us in His name, forgiveness based on those wounds that He showed to them all. To us, Jesus shows His wounds in the Body and Blood that He gives us to eat and drink in the Sacrament. May the day that we eat and drink that Sacrament together again come quickly, by God’s grace.

God’s power is unstoppable—of that we have been convinced from God’s Word, the Bible. That power has a look to it that is totally different from the power that the world is looking for. Of course, we would like our lives to be more comfortable; no one looks for inconveniences, trials, struggles and so on, at the very least we don’t look for these problems to happen to ourselves. We also know that the power of God is bad for us if we reflect on our sins and how we have disobeyed God’s Law that rightly condemns our thoughts, words and deeds. The true power of God, though, is not in His righteous Law, but in Jesus Christ who fulfilled the law for us. It’s in the Peace that passes understanding that comes from our Savior’s mouth and gives us peace in our hearts and boldness in our witness. We may not always be comfortable, but we have the inheritance that Peter wrote about! No one will ever take that away. And it is ours to share so that all will be rescued by the powerful grace that we have enjoyed. As is sung in today’s Hymn 470:

How blest are they who have not seen
And yet whose faith has constant been,
For they eternal life shall win.
Alleluia!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Please feel free to leave a message, a question, a thought, a prayer request. I’d love to hear what you think.

Christ is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia.
God bless you!

Pr. Stirdivant