Loving Without Having Seen

Peter writes this letter around the year 63, probably from Rome. He sends it to Christians scattered across five distant provinces of Asia Minor — today's Turkey. People far from everything, isolated, sometimes persecuted. These people have never seen Jesus. They have not walked with him on the roads of Galilee. They have not heard his voice by the lake.

And yet Peter — the one who saw it all, who touched Jesus, who ate grilled fish with the Risen One by the lake — Peter writes to them with infinite tenderness: "You love him."

Not "you respect him." Not just "you believe in him." You love him.

How is that possible? To love someone you have never seen?

Imagine a young woman. Her fiancé has gone far away — to the other side of the world. It was a long time ago, before phones, before the internet. The only thing she has of him is a letter. Just one. But she has read it a hundred times. She knows every sentence by heart. She recognises his handwriting, his rhythm, his turns of phrase. She knows where, in the margin, she underlined a particular word.

When she opens the drawer where she keeps it, she is not reading a text. She hears a voice. She sees a face. She feels a presence.

She knows. She is not alone.

That is what the Gospels are.

Not a theology textbook. Not a book of ancient history. A letter. The letter of the One who loves us, who wanted us to know, generation after generation, who He is, how He speaks, how He looks, how He loves.

When you read John 14 slowly, you are not studying a text. You are hearing a voice:

This sentence is not twenty centuries old. It is the age of your morning. It is spoken to you, before you go to work, before that medical exam you dread, before this day that frightens you. On condition that you open the drawer.

When I was a firefighter, I often saw families in hospital corridors. A patient in intensive care. The family sitting outside, in the silence of the night. And on the screen, behind the door, a heart monitor. That green line that rises and falls.

The family does not see the patient's heart. They only see the trace. But that trace tells them something essential: he is alive. It beats. He breathes. He is there.

And when the line becomes regular, steady — the family weeps with relief. They have not seen the heart. They have seen the sign that the heart beats.

This love for Jesus, you did not manufacture it. You did not say to yourself one morning: "Right, I'm going to love this historical figure." No. Something happened. Someone came. A presence became tangible in the invisible. A peace that descends without reason after a prayer. A strength you didn't know you had. A word that comes out of your mouth in a difficult moment, and that is not yours.

It is the work of the Spirit. He makes Christ real to our hearts. He is that quiet monitor that tells us, in the night of the corridor: He is there. He lives. He beats.

But monitors must be listened to. If you turn off the sound, if you turn your back to the screen, you no longer perceive anything. The machine works, but we are elsewhere.

Love is not nourished by great annual declarations. It is nourished by small daily attentions. A few words, several times a day. Before a difficult meeting: "Lord, be there." In a car stuck in traffic: "I'm thinking of you." Waiting at the checkout: "Thank you for being with me."

The more you listen, the more you will perceive his beats. The more you perceive his beats, the more love will grow.

Peter does not say: "You will never see him."

He says: "You believe in him without seeing him yet."

Not yet.

One day — and that day is approaching — we will see Him. Face to face. No more tarnished bronze. No more yellowish reflection. No more blurred outlines. Direct light. Eyes to eyes.

After all these years seeking Him in prayer, trusting Him through storms, loving Him without seeing Him… seeing Him at last. Not as an idea, but as a Person. Not by faith, but with our own eyes.

It will not be the meeting of a stranger. It will be a reunion.

A reunion with the One whom our heart will have learned to cherish, day after day: through a letter re-read, through the felt heartbeats of his presence, through beloved faces around us, through small fires walked through with Him.

But between today and that day, there is a week. There is a Monday starting tomorrow. And it is in this week — not in some distant eternity — that we learn to love Him.