“If doubt is challenging you and you do not act, doubts will grow. Challenge the doubts with action and you will grow. Doubt and action are incompatible.”

“Our doubts are traitors….And make us lose the good we oft might win” ― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Gospel Text: (JN 4:43-54)

At that time Jesus left [Samaria] for Galilee.
For Jesus himself testified
that a prophet has no honor in his native place.
When he came into Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him,
since they had seen all he had done in Jerusalem at the feast;
for they themselves had gone to the feast.

Then he returned to Cana in Galilee,
where he had made the water wine.
Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum.
When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea,
he went to him and asked him to come down
and heal his son, who was near death.
Jesus said to him,
“Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”
The royal official said to him,
“Sir, come down before my child dies.”
Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.”
The man believed what Jesus said to him and left.
While the man was on his way back,
his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live.
He asked them when he began to recover.
They told him,
“The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon.”
The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him,
“Your son will live,”
and he and his whole household came to believe.
Now this was the second sign Jesus did
when he came to Galilee from Judea.

Do I need signs and wonders before I am willing to believe the Word of God? Some of us do. Can any amount of signs and wonders make some people believe? No. Are there those who trust God and believe what he says and have no need for signs and wonders? Yes. This is not to denigrate the miraculous. Sometimes God blesses us with signs and wonders. However, can I trust the words of God, whether or not I ever experience miracles? God is gracious and gives us what we need.