Then Thomas … said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” ((John 11:16))

I find in Thomas the loneliness of doubt. Thomas is always a solitary figure, as doubters very generally are. You never think of Peter as being much alone—he was too ardent and impetuous for that. And you never think of John as wooing solitude with his so affectionate and sympathetic heart. But Thomas is always standing a little apart from cheerful interaction; he is solitary because he is a doubter. And on that evening of resurrection Sunday the disciples were gathered—and Thomas was not there. He was a lonely man that resurrection day, perhaps wandering amid the olives of Gethsemane, separated from all glad companionship, and separated because he was a doubter. Think of the gladness that filled these eager hearts when they whispered to one another, “Christ is risen.” Then think of Thomas, wandering alone, hurrying from all sound of human voices. For him there was no fellowship that evening in the radiant light of resurrection glory; for him there was only the loneliness of doubt.

Amid the common ties of common life, [doubt] makes a solitude and calls it peace. And that is why when any person doubts God and thinks the heaven above the stars is tenantless, sooner or later he or she has a lonely heart. There are those who doubt because they are too lonely; there are more who are lonely just because they doubt. It takes the bond of faith to give us fellowship with child and husband, with comrade, and with Christ. And when faith crumbles and doubt lifts up its head, a man or woman may still be heroic in duty, but for that person, as for Thomas on resurrection evening, there is the anguish of the lonely heart. That is the very misery of doubt. It is the mother of the hungriest loneliness. – George Morrison

From: Diana Wallis, Take Heart: Daily Devotions with the Church’s Great Preachers, (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2001), 50.