Sight Unseen

Sight Unseen

Jesus told him, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.” John 20:29

A FRIEND TELLS OF A LONG SEASON of believing God for something specific and, at several points, crying out in frustration to see the answer come. But God’s soft voice always came back with a gentle reminder that this gap between promise and fulfillment is what faith is all about—the assurance of things not yet seen. Of course, if answers remained forever unseen, there would hardly be any point. A time of fulfillment does actually come. But until it does—and that can take a really long time in some journeys of faith—we have to remember the conditions of faith. We rarely see the answer with natural eyes until we have “seen” with spiritual eyes. Just imagining the end is not enough; actively envisioning the answer as a certainty before it comes (assuming God has guided us into it) cultivates the faith we need to see it in the spirit before we see it in the flesh.

Thomas refused to believe in Jesus’ resurrection until he saw Jesus and his wounds with his own eyes. Jesus’ response to him became a call to believe for every generation after (with some exceptions, as in the case of Paul, who actually saw Jesus with his own eyes). This passage refers primarily to big-picture faith in the resurrection of Jesus as the Son of God and the salvation that comes through him. But as we’ve seen, faith is not separable into faith for salvation and faith for other things. It’s all part of the same package. Though we haven’t seen Jesus’ resurrected body walking around on earth giving sight to the blind, cleansing lepers, and raising the dead, we can still believe all of it. That’s the point of faith. It’s the assurance of things hoped for and evidence of things not yet seen (Hebrews 11:1). We see Kingdom realities with eyes that are learning to envision in new ways.

You will spend the rest of your life honing this sense of spiritual vision. That’s expected. But it’s also essential. You cannot live the life of faith without it. You can hope for things and trust God vaguely, both of which are significant. But deep, lasting faith comes with the art of envisioning. Unlike Thomas, choose to believe without seeing, but see with your believing. Jesus blesses those who do.

Detachment from visible things is to open your eyes to the invisible.