The Time it Takes: Trusting with Saint Thomas

It takes the time it takes, I heard the speaker say.

That is to say, the growth or contented peace that we may long for cannot be engineered or forced into being. There is an unfolding that happens as our spirit stretches toward the wide-open abundance God has intended for us, and it’s not something we make happen.

No wonder we need the season of Advent to roll around every year; we can use the practice of waiting and watching for God. It’s a helpful counterpoint to the to-do list I’m presently all but obsessing over: I need an invitation to sit with the incomplete and not-comprehended, and trust that God moves and blesses in that space.

The spiritual gifts God gives us do not depend on whether we are optimizing our time and learning opportunities and fiber intake.

We also need the wisdom we find in the Feast of Saint Thomas, Apostle. In the reading from Habakkuk appointed for Thomas’ feast day, the prophet hears an answer from the Lord:

If it seems to tarry, wait for it;
it will surely come, it will not delay.

There’s a sense of uncertainty paired with an invitation to trust.

Saint Thomas is probably best known for the story in John 20, in which the risen Christ had appeared to the other disciples in the locked room where they were laying low, while Thomas was out. When Thomas returned and heard their tale about encountering Jesus whom he knew to be dead, he said exactly what he would need in order to believe: ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’

Who knows whether Thomas actually thought his question could be answered. Yet he put that desire out in the open, declaring an incomplete and not-comprehending faith: I need God to act. What I notice about Thomas this year is his recognition that he actually doesn’t have everything he needs, and he’s under no illusion that peace will come if he just digs a little deeper within himself, buckling down like a spiritual honor roll student.

Instead, he says bluntly that he needs help with accepting this very different reality. I wonder if the promise heard by the prophet also whispered in Thomas’s ear:

If it seems to tarry, wait for it;
it will surely come, it will not delay.

The remarkable thing, of course, is that Thomas did get exactly what he asked for. A week later, when Thomas and the others were gathered in that same house, with the doors shut tight, Jesus stood again among them and proclaimed peace. We’re not told that Thomas worked it out in his mind or settled on a satisfying explanation; Jesus gave him the gift of peace. He showed the wounds on his hands and his side to Thomas and let him touch and feel their bodily reality. Thomas was moved and exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!”

…but how about that week in between? This band of Jesus’ closest followers, brokenhearted and afraid as they had been at his death, had been given the peace and reconciling Spirit of God in their experience of the risen Christ. How sorrowful they must have been (or frustrated, angry?) that Thomas couldn’t also believe this mysterious and wonderful news.

Was Thomas curious or annoyed that they seemed so set on telling the story in this way? Was he envious of what they had experienced, or skeptical about whether it made any sense? If you’ve ever been at odds with the people closest to you – a spouse, a circle of friends, your siblings, or parents, or children – you know it can make your stomach ache to feel the separation and loneliness of that division.

It takes the time it takes.

You may have felt (or now feel) that separation when loved ones saw things differently than you: how to abide a pandemic, or a candidate’s worthiness for office, or to what level of urgency climate action rises. You may feel that separation from God, as you pray for and await divine intervention into the horrific, intractable suffering that continues to reverberate in the world.

If it seems to tarry, wait for it;
it will surely come, it will not delay.

Jesus returned to be present to Thomas and give him the peace and assurance he needed. I fully believe there is good and holy work for us to do as followers of the risen Christ—that we have been blessed ‘with memory, reason, and skill’ to borrow from one of our eucharistic prayers, so that we too can participate in the reconciling of the world. The work we do must arise out of that God-given peace and assurance as it did for Thomas, the so-called doubter who took the gospel to India in his later years. Waiting helps us trust that with solace will also come strength; with pardon, the renewal we need to live out our faith.

Thank you, Thomas, for helping us to trust in what is to come.