Total Pageviews

Monday, October 3, 2011

The Fish That Chewed Bubblegum

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”John 20:29 (New International Version)



When I was a lad of eleven I was fishing at Shasta Lake with my cousin Janet. I soon ran out of cheese I was using for bait. I was chewing bubble gum and thought I’d put a piece of it on my hook. I was holding my pole while the hook dangled above the water as Jan and I chatted. To our surprise a small mouth bass jumped at the hook and temporarily was stuck to the gum. All I could figure was he wanted to blow better bubbles. When I tried to pull it in he fell off the hook. One of the most amazing fishing stories of my life, if not the funniest. When I got back to camp I told the story to my dad and Aunt Dorothy. They both smiled skeptically and Dorothy said, “Ah, the one that got away…” My story made me look like a junior member of the Fisherman Liar’s Club. They had good reason to doubt my story as they had not witnessed it.

The religious leaders of Israel had no excuse to doubt who Jesus was. They saw Him bodily and witnessed the great miracles He did. They couldn’t deny what they saw Him do so they consigned His mighty works to the Devil declaring He was an agent of Satan (Matthew 12:24). Tragically they saw yet refused to believe.

Jesus offers a divine blessing upon all who would come to faith in Him without a visible, bodily manifestation. This blessing comes to all who believe through the gospel accounts and the validity of the evidences available to us. We who believe on Him are not deprived by not seeing Him physically. Because He is true when we believe on Him we become recipients of His special blessing. Sometime seeing doesn’t necessarily mean believing. The greater blessing comes in believing in something true even if we have not yet seen it.

Ken

www.devotionstoday.blogspot.com