Please note: This is a work of fiction. Historically and truth based, but still fiction.
Thomas wept. It felt like days of weeping. The smell of the streets were woven into his clothes, blood staining the tip of his robe. His best friend’s blood had stained his robe as Thomas followed the man being forced to carry the wood that would be used to murder him.
The man was tortured. His blood covered the streets. Thomas saw his back all torn up and nausea hit immediately. He could see bone and where his body was destroyed.
It was the soldiers that ultimately got to Thomas. That’s where the fear came strong. If they did that to Jesus, Thomas could only imagine what they’d do to him.
So he ran. He ran fast, he ran hard. He looked for a place to hide and that’s when the doubt came. Jesus could stop them. He knew Jesus could. He could stop them. Why didn’t he? He could have stopped it all.
Maybe he wasn’t who he said he was? The question scared him more than the opposite being true so he quickly dismissed it.
He came to the upper room and walked in to see several other disciples there. Mary was there too. He couldn’t face her. He left. Again. Running seemed to be what he was best at doing at the moment. He ran. He ran all the way to Bethany, straight to Lazarus’s house and straight to the resurrected man himself.
And he told Lazarus everything that had happened.
“Thomas you need to go back.” Lazarus said, “you need to be with everyone else.”
But Thomas stayed. He stayed one more day. He stayed, away from everyone else, away from the noise of Jerusalem. An almost 2 hour walk away.
He had ran it in an hour.
The blisters and cuts on his feet made walking anymore painful, so Lazarus kindly gave him a horse and on Sunday he rode back to Jerusalem.
When he got there the other disciples had lost their minds. Now, he didn’t actually believe that, but he definitely thought it.
They told him that they’d seem him. They told him He was alive. Part of Thomas wanted to believe them but he still said the words that would be infamously attached to him for all eternity.
He had to touch his hands and feet to fully believe their story. They tried to convince him for a week, but the image of the rib bone showing on Jesus’s back was imprinted into his brain. The blood was still dry on his robe and he had noticed it stained his toenails and sandals as well. And so Thomas wept. He wept and ignored everyone else for a week.
He wept uncontrollably. The disciples tried consoling him, but really there was only one man who could.
A week later, they were all locked in a room together. They were hiding from the religious leaders and Romans. Their claim of Jesus’s resserection was causing uproar.
Locked on that room, they were singing songs of David. They sang “Lift up your heads, O gates! And lift them up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.”
Thomas looked up. The words echoed in the room like a declaration of war. Something felt new. The light was coming through the window and sun rays beaming into the room were like banners to the heavens and the glory of God. Thomas felt a firm, yet soft touch on his shoulder. A calloused hand moved the fabric as a familiar voice said,
“Peace be with you”
Thomas looked at the hand, his eyes just staring for two seconds as he registered what he was seeing. The hole he expected to be there surely was there, the hole in whose hands he was hoping they’d be in.
He turned around, the holey hand falling into Thomas’s hand, his finger grazing the mark of the nail in the wound.
“Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.”
Thomas put his finger exactly where Jesus told him, exactly where Jesus’s body had been fastened to the cross.
One hand still touching the hole, Thomas reached out to Jesus’ side. His whole hand touched it. He was flesh and blood, this man. Truly there. Not a ghost. Alive and well.
Like Lazarus, the man who had harbored Thomas, when all seemed lost, Thomas’s best friend had been risen from death. He looked straight at Jesus’ face for the first time and fell at his feet, his hands clutching them as he bowed. His lips grazed the top of Jesus’s feet like Mary had done weeks earlier.
Thomas said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus knelt down and raised Thomas’s face up. A smile was there on his lips, which made Thomas grin, joy filling his whole body.
“Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
There was no condemnation in his voice. Thomas loved that about him. Every doubt of who this man was was erased. He was the Messiah. He was the Messiah and he was the Son of God.
He was the King of Glory. He was the King of Glory that would send this disciple who was no longer doubtful or fearful to the ends of the Earth to share with everyone he knew that this man had risen. Thomas had doubted but had been joyfully incorrect in his doubt. He would tell them how he touched the holes and touched his side. He’d seen the scars from the crown of thorns.
He’d seen Jesus’ face. He had touched his hands and feet and side and Jesus was alive and well, living and breathing and pursuing.
He was alive.