TWENTY-SEVEN
SOMEDAY WE'LL SEE
I remember the first time we spoke publicly about Colton’s experience. It
was during the evening service on January 28, 2007, at Mountain View
Wesleyan Church in Colorado Springs. During the morning service, I
preached the sermon, a message about Thomas, the disciple who was
angry because the other disciples, and even Mary Magdalene, had gotten
to see the risen Christ and he hadn’t. The story is told in the gospel of
John:
Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when
Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger
where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”
A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them.
Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said,
“Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands.
Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are
those who have not seen and yet have believed.”^1This story is where we get the familiar term “doubting Thomas,”
someone who refuses to believe something without physical evidence or
direct personal experience. In other words, a person without faith.
In my sermon that morning, I talked about my own anger and lack of faith,
about the stormy moments I spent in that little room in the hospital, raging
against God, and about how God came back to me, through my son,
saying, “Here I am.”
People who attended the service that morning went out and told their
friends that a preacher and his wife whose son had been to heaven would
be telling more of the story during the evening service. That night, the
church was packed. Colton, by now seven years old, sat in the second pew
along with his brother and sister while Sonja and I told the story of his
experience as well as we could in the space of forty-five minutes. We