A prayer group was discussing what was the best position for prayer. One person said, “On my knees.” Another said, “Sitting before the Tabernacle.” Another said, “I pray best out walking.” The conversation went on. Finally, an electrician who was repairing a light switch in the back of the room entered the conversation. Coming toward the circle of friends he said, “I can tell you how I prayed best: hanging upside down from a telephone pole in a storm!”
How do you pray when you are desperate? How do you mix use of your own abilities with depending on God? Today’s readings give us guidance for handling times when the odds are against us. By looking at them carefully we can see how very important our trust is to God.
In the first reading we have the story of what happened as the Israelites approached the Promised Land. Jacob had been a nomad, roaming the land with his flocks. Biblical scholars believe 430 years passed between the time Jacob’s family left the Promised Land and the time when Moses led the people back home to it. In that time Jacob’s family had grown to thousands.
When Moses sent representatives of the tribes to check out the situation, they reported that many people lived in the land. It was a “land of milk and honey” as the Lord had promised, but “the people who are living in the land are fierce, and the towns are fortified and very strong.” The situation looked nearly impossible. Thinking of their own human capacities, most of those who had seen the land said, “We cannot attack these people; they are too strong for us.”
Their fear was so great they went a step further. Today psychologists would call what they did “awfulizing.” They let their minds think about the problem until they moved beyond truth to believing their imagined worst possible scenario was truth. “The land that we explored is a country that consumes its inhabitants. And all the people we saw there are huge, veritable giants (the Anakim were a race of giants); we felt like mere grasshoppers, and so we must have seemed to them.” Perhaps the Anakim were larger than most people, but history tells us other peoples in the land—Amalekites, Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, and Canaanites were not giants. Awfulizing led to believing a lie that quelched hope and trust in God’s care.
The scouts who went into the Promised Land did not bring their fears and concerns to God to see what He would do with them. They trusted their own judgment, came to the human conclusion the situation was impossible, “and even in the night people wailed.”
The Canaanite woman in the Gospel today took a different tactic. Her daughter was “tormented by demons.” She heard Jesus could cast out demons. The woman loved her daughter. She realized Jesus was Jewish and that Jesus was healing Jews. She was also gutsy bold. At first Jesus ignored her. The disciples suggested the woman was a heckler and that Jesus should send her away.
Jesus was not in the habit of sending people away. I imagine him talking to himself as much as to the disciples when he said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” The woman got close enough to Jesus to “do him homage” and plead her case. What was Jesus thinking? He replied, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” Was he musing, trying to figure out what to do? Was he reflecting beliefs of his time? Did he not yet understand his mission extended beyond the Jews? Scholars have debated those questions for centuries. We don’t know.
Whatever Jesus had been thinking, he responded with openness and love when the woman said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”
The woman stuck to truth, a relevant truth, and trusted. Spoken so boldly, it set free God’s love. Jesus said to her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” Her daughter was healed.
I will be honest. It was very, very good for me to write this reflection. I have learned generally to trust God, but I am more likely to be like the Israelite scouts than the Canaanite woman when I am faced with a situation that seems impossible.
I do not blame God when bad things happen. I do not say, “I guess it is God’s will.” God does not will evil. But I do cower and wail when things get really bad. Too many times in my life I have let evil determine what happens next in my life because I did not do what the electrician did from the telephone poll and what the Canaanite woman did with Jesus: with heart and soul cry out to God to do the impossible, then use my human abilities to cooperate with whatever opportunities God gives me.
When the Canaanite woman cried out, Jesus’ response was the response of a loving God: he healed her daughter.
It is harder to see how God’s response to the Israelites was loving: he sentenced them to wander as nomads across the desert for 40 years because they didn’t trust him. To my 21st century mind that seems extreme. I ask, “God, how were you loving there?”
My answer is a reflection on my own life. When I have persistently and boldly cried out to God in desperate situations, God helped. He was there. His solution didn’t always match my picture of solution, but God always had a good solution. When I have been like the Israelites and awfulized the situation so I grew overwhelmed and helpless, I had to endure desperate times with only my human capacities. I did not have good solutions. I suffered—often with an added suffering of feeling alienated from God.
God simply let the Israelites experience that, indeed, they couldn’t overcome the inhabitants of the Promised Land on their own. They would have to wait, experiencing desert, until they were willing to trust him to show them how to do it. That, too, can explain desert times in my life when I did not trust God enough. He let me experience the consequences of my lack of trust—to help me learn to let go and let God.
Prayer:
“Lord, today lead me to be the Canaanite woman. Give me the grace to trust You ALWAYS, especially when things seem impossible. Fill me with Holy Spirit gifts of Holy Fear,Courage, Counsel, and Wisdom to help me know what I can do—and what I need to leave to You. Forgive me for the many years of my life that I chose to wander in the desert of humanism because I did not trust You enough. Cast out the demons of doubt that still plague me. Help me repent of awfulizing. Heart of Jesus, from which flowed both blood and water as a fount of mercy for us, I trust in You.”
