Searching
The quickest transformation from disbelief to belief occurs in the story of Nathaniel.
The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’ Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’ When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you come to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ Jesus answered, ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.’ And he said to him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’ - John 1:43-51
Philip followed Jesus right away, so he was already a believer. But his brother was skeptical.
Nathaniel approaches things the way we do sometimes, having preconceived notions of what is possible and needing to be convinced.
Now, what convinces Nathaniel seems a bit odd to me. And it sounds as though it was odd to Jesus as well. But Nathaniel was a seeker. Philip points this out when he tells his brother this is the one Moses wrote about.
They must have been seeking the Messiah, but hadn't heard that he would have come from Nazareth. So, Nathaniel had a different expectation. And he looked down on Nazarenes.
It is when Jesus says he knows Nathaniel that Nathaniel's eyes are opened to him. Maybe this could be who they were searching for after all.
Isn't that true for us as well? Don't we look for things and fail to see them when we find them?
Even now, we are waiting for life to get back to normal, yet when it was normal, we were hoping for something else. Maybe we need to look more closely at what is staring us in the face and stop searching for something else.
More to come...