Our blog is inspired by The Holy Spirit.
At that time Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.
And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out,
“Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David!
My daughter is tormented by a demon.”
But he did not say a word in answer to her.
His disciples came and asked him,
“Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.”
He said in reply,
“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
But the woman came and did him homage, saying, “Lord, help me.”
He said in reply,
“It is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs.”
She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps
that fall from the table of their masters.”
Then Jesus said to her in reply,
“O woman, great is your faith!
Let it be done for you as you wish.”
And her daughter was healed from that hour. (Emphasis Mine) Matthew 15: 21-28
I have always been fascinated by this reading.
Jesus is painted by Matthew in not, in my mind anyway, a really positive light.
First, Jesus didn’t respond to her request; He did not say a word to answer her. I don’t recall any other time in the Bible, and I am not a Bible scholar, where Jesus remained silent when someone made a request.
When Jesus was hanging on the Cross, the man crucified to His right said Jesus was innocent, and he, the man on Jesus’ right, deserved to be Crucified. Then he asked Jesus to remember him, that’s all, just remember me; Jesus’ response was, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” Luke 23:42
Jesus didn’t wait to answer but gave the man on His right an Immediate answer to his request.
Then Jesus does respond to the woman and tells her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Sent to the lost sheep of Israel is an interesting response because when Jesus appeared to the Samaritan woman at the well, He explained to her who he was and how He would be the source of living water. John 4:9
The Samaritan woman at the well is in the fourth chapter of John, and the above Gospel reading is in the fifteenth chapter of Matthew.
Interesting.
Next, Jesus tells her, “It is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs.”
Wow!
What Jesus said is a harsh statement, but now is when I admire the grit of the woman. She doesn’t blink an eye but responds to Jesus, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”
She stood right up to Jesus and restated her case, given the new fact that she and her daughter might be considered a dog.
Let’s pause and put the story in a more modern context.
The woman replied, “How dare you call me and my daughter a dog; who do you think you are?”
Where does she go from here?
She doesn’t, nor is her daughter healed.
Getting back never solves a problem; instead, it creates new problems.
Her daughter won’t be healed, and she won’t learn about a Loving, Caring God.
but,
She didn’t care what Jesus called her and her daughter; she wanted her daughter healed!
Jesus now pivoted and said,
“O woman, great is your faith!
Let it be done for you as you wish.”
This is the Jesus I know and Love,
But why did we have to go through this exercise?
Why didn’t Jesus heal the daughter right off as he had done many times before with others?
I, we, think it is to show the power of persistent prayer.
I am reading a book entitled The Sermon on the Mount by Emmet Fox, an excellent book. One theme the author keeps emphasizing is the power of prayer.
I don’t believe most people understand how powerful your prayers are.
Sometimes God grants your request at once, and sometimes it can take days, weeks, or months, and in one case in my life, it took years to get the prayer answered.
But pray for a resolution of that particular difficulty I, we, did every day.
Why does God wait, I’ve asked myself?
To bring us closer to Them.
A few years ago, I, not we, decided to walk ten thousand steps a day during Lent.
Every day I walked ten thousand steps nonstop.
Stupid!
I walk ten thousand steps while playing golf but occasionally stop to hit the ball.
At the end of Lent, my feet, knees, and hips hurt.
I prayed for a healing,
No answer!
I continued to pray for a healing, and maybe two months later was told by The Holy Spirit to buy foot powder.
Foot Powder?
How will this help my knees and hips, I thought to myself?
I did buy the foot powder, which I had never used before in my life, and kept praying.
A week or so later, the feet felt much better.
A month or so later, the knees felt better.
And shortly after that, my hips felt much better.
I thanked God all the time for the difficulty I had with my feet, knees, and hips.
Today I walk almost nine thousand steps daily, playing golf with no pain.
Many of you may think that foot powder couldn’t heal all of my pains, and I might agree.
But,
I’m healed, and like the woman in the Gospel story, I didn’t care how God took care of me; I just wanted God to take care of me.
If you haven’t tried Persistent Prayer yet, unlock the power of prayer in your life, it’s a game changer.
“The nine” We pray you will grow in the Love, Joy, and Peace of the Holy Spirit by growing in Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control.
Sidebar:
As I was receiving communion today, I thought that, sadly, I don’t believe we will ever be able to receive the Wine (Blood of Jesus) from the cup the priest consecrates the wine in.
That’s sad!
I am sure years from now, people won’t even believe we received the Blood of Jesus at Mass from the Chalice at one time.
As I reflect on the eighty-one years I have been on this planet, I realize how much we have lost in that period.
At golf, I talked with Tom O’Reilly and told him I walked one mile daily to school. Tom said he walked in Philadelphia three blocks to get a bus and rode the bus five miles to his school alone. Tom and I were talking about going to grade school.
We all left home in the morning, on the weekends, and listened for the sound of the dinner bell calling us home. No parents hung around us.
We set up our games and rules once again with no parents.
Birthday parties were a chance to drop off the kids and have a few hours off without the kids. Today I see more parents than kids at parties.
We started doing lawn jobs or other jobs at age fourteen and, in my case, paid a tax of fifty percent to dad for college.
The back door was always open; no knocking on the door.
We had to wait for things we wanted because we didn’t have the money to buy everything we wanted when we wanted it.
I found waiting hard but also good.
I tried to learn Patience.
I am not insinuating that all was roses. Yes, we had our problems, but we were not given a steady barrage of those problems hourly.
Our music we could, and still do, sing.
We had respect for the opposite sex.
Friendship meant something.
Stores were closed on Sundays to make the day a family day and a day of rest.
We learned how to entertain ourselves.
I miss what we had,
As I grew older, I left the Love, Joy, and Peace I knew as a child and started to live in the “World” filled with stress, anger, greed, power, and lust, to mention a few.
And it wasn’t until I turned seventy that the Holy Spirit said “Enough,” and I, yes I, reluctantly agreed a complete makeover had to occur.
I would love to say the change was instantaneous; it wasn’t, but once I, now we, started to enjoy even more growth in Love, Joy, and Peace, I, we, embraced the change.
I now restate in my daily prayers that I, in this case, I NEVER want to return to where I was.
We also know you will find life in the “Spirit World” to be greater than you could imagine.
If you haven’t taken the leap of faith to live in the “Spirit World,” take it, you’ll never look back.
Picture:
We are showing this picture for two reasons:
- We sailed on this ship in the spring to Saint Petersburg, Russia, and that fall, I rode my bike to Bug Light and saw the same ship in Portland Harbor doing a fall foliage cruise.
2. Gail and I received an offer from the cruise line two weeks before the cruise left for St. Petersburg and bought our tickets. We ended up paying one-half the cost of the cruise for a better room with a balcony. The cost reduction, I believe, was because the cruise line wanted to fill the ship so their staff could get maximum tips.
God took care of us!
Write a comment if you want more information on how Gail and I obtained this reduction.
