Devotion - Thursday, April 12

Our following of Jesus remains (yes - remains) a mixture of certainty and doubt. To "walk by faith" is to move, to make progress, to advance, but to do so with trust or a confidence which is built on something other than objective knowledge.

We do our research and we spend hours studying, and we come to KNOW certain things about God, about how God interacts with us, and how the presence of God affects and changes our lives and our world.

But there remain those moments, those instances, those situations in which we wonder.

The appointed Gospel reading for today is Matthew 28:16-20. This is one of the verses you probably have memorized. Ironically, it was one of the verses in Tuesday's bible study. Sometimes called "The Great Commission," it is Jesus' instructions to "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I (Jesus) has commanded you."

There is also a promise, in these verses. As they go, Jesus promises "and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age." They needed that assurance. They would depend on this promise.

I have read these verses many times. I have read the verses which set the stage. The eleven disciples go to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had directed them. It is here that he gives them the great commission. When they come down from that mountain, they will go. And as a result of their going the nations of the world will come to know the name of Jesus.

This morning I noticed one little phrase, in these powerful verses. When the disciples arrive on the mountain, and they see Jesus, Matthew allows to realize that the eleven were certain, but that they also had doubts. Matthew writes, "And when they saw him they worshiped him; but some doubted."

I want your doubt to be removed from you. The desire is that each of us would come to possess a greater certainty in our lives. However, when we find ourselves experiencing doubt, we should not hide it away (or hide ourselves away) as if we are no longer worthy of being a part of Jesus' family. The lives of God's children is a mixture of certainty and doubt. We share our insecurities in the midst of the community so that those who are in a more certain place might remind us of what it is like to be there - while themselves remembering the times when they, too, were wondering or wandering.