Eyes of the heart

Daily Reading for April 20

“Have you believed because you have seen me?” Jesus asked Thomas, our twin. My guess is that Thomas believed not because of what his eyes had seen, but because of what his heart had seen. With his eyes, he had seen only Jesus the son of Joseph and Mary, a man much like other men—so many inches high, so many pounds heavy, hair this color, eyes that color. But with his heart, he saw, maybe for the first time in his life, the one he was destined to love and search for and try to follow as best he could for the rest of his days when Jesus was no longer around for him to see with his eyes—any more than he is around for us to see with ours.

The last thing of all that Jesus said to his disciples that day was, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe,” and I think that among others he meant you and me. We have not seen him with our eyes the way Thomas did, but precious as that sight would have been, I wonder in the long run what difference it would have made. What makes all the difference in the world is the one whom from time to time, by grace, I believe we have seen with our hearts. The one who is there to see always if we will only keep our hearts peeled for him.

To see him with the heart is to know that, in the long run, his kind of life is the only life worth living. To see him with the heart is not only to believe in him, but little by little to become bearers to each other of his healing life until we become finally healed and whole and alive within ourselves. To see him with the heart is to take heart, to grow true hearts, brave hearts, at last.

From “The Eyes of the Heart” by Frederick Buechner, in Shouts and Whispers: Twenty-One Writers Speak About Their Writing and Their Faith, edited by Jennifer L. Holberg (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006).

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