8-29-2024

Good Morning All,

   Matthew 15: 26-27: “And he answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”   She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” 

    This is a portion of the story of the Canaanite woman and her faith.  She came to Jesus looking for a miracle for her daughter and the disciples tried to send her away.  It appears that Jesus is as well as He tells her He came for the lost sheep of Israel, and she was not one of them.  She continues to pray and plead with Jesus until He relents.  Then Jesus praises her faith and heals her daughter.

    To many this seems to be a story about how nagging will win the day.  If you just keep pestering God long enough, He will give in and give you what you want.  But that is not what is going on here.  This is a better case of playing “who am I in the parable?”  Whenever we play this game, we always want to be the good guy.  We always want to be the Good Samaritan when we read that story; we want to be the example of goodness and right faith.  But if we are honest; are we the good guys or are we the foolish guys?

    In this story we want to be the Canaanite woman who, even though seemingly rejected by Jesus, continues to plead, and beg our Lord for His mercy.  Is that really us?  Do we continue to pray and pray until God answers our prayer?  Or do we give up and walk away?

   The unfortunate truth is that we are usually more like the disciples were in this story.  Eating a feast at the table with Jesus; spilling and wasting enough food that a poor outsider saw it as enough to live off of.  Isn’t that really how we are?  We receive such an abundance of blessings from God that we fail to see how great they are and then we begrudge someone else who seeks just a scrap of the blessings that we have.  Most have multiple TVs in their homes, most have multiple cell phones, and many have multiple computers.  We have multiple vehicles and spend a lot of money on entertainment.  We spend thousands of dollars on health care because we are overweight while a huge chunk of the world slowly starves to death.

    Does this mean we are bad people because we have wealth?  Not necessarily, wealth is a gift from God, but do we give thanks for that wealth like we should, or have we reached a point where we feel entitled to this prosperity?  We need to be thankful to God for all that He has given to us, and we need to pray that we do not become so hung up on what we have that wealth becomes our god.  We need to see God’s hand at work in our lives and give thanks to the Lord.  Then we need to look for ways to share God’s love and blessings with those around us both near and far.

 Dear Heavenly Father, too often we sit at your table and feast and do not see the great and wonderful blessings that we have.  We confess that all too often we are like the disciples who assume blessings and dismiss those who are in need.  We ask for your divine mercy.  Give us strength to follow You and show mercy to those in need.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret