To see is to believe. There are times when I hear about things so outrageous or so out of the range of my experience, I would often say, like Thomas, that unless I see it with my own eyes, I will not believe it. With the cynicism and jadedness I have developed over the years, I would often find myself looking for a catch in unexpected kindness or look for a hidden agenda in what other people do. When it is too good to be true, it is probably not true. This is the conventional wisdom of the world. “Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery.” is always a good advice.
Yet, there is this nagging feeling within me that says there is more to life than what I can perceive with my eyes and with my senses, that “with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.” I see it everyday in the lives of ordinary people: in the bravery and courage of those supposedly weak, in the kindness and generosity of those who are poor, in the wisdom and counsel of those who are supposedly ignorant and unknowing. When I believe in people, I see the essential goodness in them, their willingness to give and help, their ability to turn disappointments into joys. When I believe what my senses cannot see; I see beauty where before there was only drab scenery, I see events, which are not to my expectations, as setting stages for some other happenings that would blow my mind away. Indeed, To believe is to see.
Faith is both a gift and a choice. God sends forth the seeds of believing like the light he scatters about in the universe. He makes the spirit of faith to blow across all creation. He issues forth a call, an invitation to a relationship where the visible meets the invisible, the physical meets the spiritual and the divine meets that which is human. It is a gift to me for the taking. I have to decide whether to accept this gift. Will I go through life believing only what I see with my senses and forever live in darkness? Or, will I believe and see things in the light of faith and see things that otherwise would be missed by my senses? I have responded to the call and I have chosen to believe.
And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.
John 3:16-21