We sometimes ask for and seek empirical evidence that the stories people have told us are true.  Sometimes after telling someone the truth, their remark may well be, “I don’t believe you!”  For some people there aren’t enough words to convince, not enough witnesses to confirm, not enough empirical evidence to make yourself a faithful and believable witness.  And yet, in most cases, all we have is our witness.  All we have is our experience of what we know, what we experienced, what we felt, or saw, or heard.  And our words, experiences, are easily impeached by the other person’s doubt — not by their counter experience — but by nothing more than their refusal to believe.

         Being a faithful witness perhaps begins by telling the story of God’s faithfulness and truth — how Christ was revealed to us; when Christ was revealed to us; where Christ was revealed to us, and how his revealing changed our doubt to belief.  It’s not easy (nor might it be simple) trying to tell someone else something as unbelievable as the dead being resurrected and speaking with you, walking with you, embracing you in tender and intimate moments filled with love and understanding.  But that is the risen Christ we serve.  He’s not a God of anger, resentment, bitterness and spite.  He’s a God of understanding and love — a God who comes to bring peace to those who have doubts and those who don’t believe, offering them the opportunity to experience for themselves the reality of the risen Christ in a way that removes all doubts and fears.

• Have you ever experienced a time of doubting when Christ came to remove your doubts and fears?
• In what ways did your experience strengthen your faithful witness about the risen Christ?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Merciful Christ, let not my faithful witness about your resurrection be dissuaded by the doubts and fears of others. Enable my witness to remain a solid part of my faith.

         Witnessing is an important part of the human experience.  If there is someone who can verify who we are — identify us in some way or another, they become witnesses to our reality.  If they are able in some cases even to verify that we either were or weren’t present, they become witnesses to our presence or absence.  In some cases, there is something so unique about us, that people can identify and be witnesses for us by our voice, our walk, our laugh, or some other trait that sets us apart from anyone else.

         It would seem from our text that the same is true in the world of the spirits.  Apparently, who Jesus was and is, was not limited to those who walked with him.  He was also known to those who recognized his power and authority from within the realm of the spirits and wanted Jesus to have nothing to do with them.  It’s clear from their response that who Jesus is — “The Holy One of God” — and who they represented had totally different agendas to carry out, or at the very least were in awe of him.  But they recognized and knew who Jesus was and openly witnessed to his presence and authority.

         Those of us who have awakened in a new age, millennia following the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus have (in our own way) become his faithful witnesses to who he is, what he’s done, and his resurrection.  While we may not have seen him walking around the streets of Jerusalem or Galilee, we can acknowledge that he’s been a real and true presence in our lives in ways that are undeniable.  In his presence in our lives, we testify to his resurrection because he lives within us.  At times he’s even made an appearance in a spiritual way that was unmistakably the risen Christ.  When we share stories of his life in and among us, we acknowledge our part as faithful witnesses of his resurrection, if only by faith.  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.

• How does your recognition and acknowledgment of Jesus lead you to be a faithful witness of Jesus Christ and his resurrection?
• When have you personally recognized Jesus’s presence with you?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Loving Christ, enable me to recognize the presence of Your Spirit with me as a testimony and witness to others of Your resurrection.

         As we live and breathe, at this very moment the space shuttle Artemis 2 has landed from circling the moon.  The four astronauts on board the shuttle have sent their thoughts and photographs of their historic journey.  Their remarks about their journey have at times bordered on speechlessness, but each of them has been in awe of what they have seen and experienced.  They are witnesses to something no one on earth has ever witnessed before — seeing the dark side of the moon.  While on their journey, they’ve witnessed an up close and personal eclipse of the sun, remarking that the bright side of the moon — the side we see from earth —is so bright that it’s impossible to look at it directly.  And this blue marble (the earth) we live on daily defies definition because of its remarkable beauty.  We will forever live with the witness of those four astronauts and their story of their journey.  And the story will be told and believed by some who will never experience what they’ve experienced.

         This is nothing at all different from those who — like Peter, the other disciples, and the thousands of others — witnessed the resurrected person of Jesus Christ.  And without, newspapers, internet, social media, world-wide news outlets, they told the story of the resurrected Christ, voicing their confidence of faith that what they saw and experienced was nothing less than the truth of God being revealed right before their very eyes.  They even had the prophetic, historical, story of David to verify and affirm that what they saw and experienced had been predicted years before it actually happened.  And so, it is through the witness of the faithful that saw it then and God’s confirmation in the hearts of us who now believe — faithful witnesses — that the story and the message of Jesus Christ and his resurrection continues to be told, believed, and verified through the witness of the faithful in our day.

• How has your faithful witness been valuable in continuing the truth of the resurrection of Christ in your faith and life?
• Who was one of the faithful witnesses that helped you to believe in Christ and his resurrection?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Gracious God, encourage and empower me to be one of the faithful witnesses that testifies to the truth of God’s faithful witness and the power of Your resurrection to us throughout the ages.