Believing is seeing

Have you ever spent time looking high and low for something that you just can't find – your keys, your phone, a bag, a book – only to have somebody else point to it straightaway, right there in plain view? It can be so frustrating!

It's well established in biological science that not everything a person 'sees' at any given moment is really there. Where the optic nerve connects to the retina at the back of each eye is a spot with no photoreceptors.  Every image that our brain receives from our eyes has a 'blind spot'. Remarkably, our brain fills the hole so what we 'see' is a combination of what our eyes report and what our brain believes to be there.

There is no doubt that around 2,000 years ago a man called Jesus was executed by order of the Roman Prefect of Judaea. Contemporary Christian, Roman, and Jewish writers record the crucifixion of Jesus, often identifying him as "king of the Jews".

In his Gospel account and its sequel, 'The Acts of the Apostles', Luke makes frequent references to eyewitness testimonies to the resurrection of Jesus. Paul, the Jewish ideologue who converted to Christianity and became one its most influential preachers, lists the people who saw the resurrected Jesus, most of whom were still alive when he was writing, only 25 years after the event. Other early Christian writers make the same claim.

Is it now time to compensate for our blind spots?  Can you believe that Jesus was brought back to life by God three days later?  Just as we sometimes rely on others to help us find what we are looking for, we can rely on the many eyewitness accounts of those amazing events.

There is clear evidence in front of our eyes confirming that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Such a remarkable event demands some recognition at least, and cries out for a dedicated response. After all, he died and rose for you.

Originally posted on www.from-above.org.