People feel sorry for Thomas.
Like if you were there, and your friends said they had seen the risen Lord, you wouldn't have said,
"ya right!"?
It's sometimes easier to believe with blind faith then to question and then believe.
Thomas wanted to believe....it's just hard.
Lots of things in life are like that.
A couple of years ago when we met Ole in a coffee house and he told us that we could join together with our fellow nurses, form a union, and make a difference,....I wanted to believe.
I DID believe. Yet a part of me was asking why we met in a coffee house far from the hospital like secret agents.
Looking back, I can see that Ole did a masterful job in giving us enough information for the day, but not too much. He once showed me a video of a mock meeting between management and a worker where the manager tried to scare the worker into submission. He stated that he couldn't show it to everyone because not everyone was ready to see it.
I thought, what makes him think I'm ready?
But when I came up against a similar situation, I was ready, I had been prepared.
So my belief that we could be successful was based on my "seeing" that I was being prepared.
When we started reaching out to others at work, some people and some departments were reluctant to believe that we could be successful, that we could make a difference, that THEY could make a difference.
Now we have delegates in every large unit, we have filed grievances, reversed or modified some discipline and will soon argue our first arbitration. We have the ear of our congressman, senators, governor and state and local legislators, We are well known at our state and national federation and to other labor unions, and we have partnered with non profits to benefit the community.
So yes, many of us, like Thomas, have to see to fully believe, but, like Thomas, we can do great things once we see.
