{"id":2178,"date":"2018-01-09T10:50:23","date_gmt":"2018-01-09T18:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/?p=2178"},"modified":"2018-01-24T20:04:47","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T04:04:47","slug":"enough-faith-for-crumbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/2018\/enough-faith-for-crumbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Enough Faith for Crumbs?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Reading:<\/p>\n

Matthew 15:21-31<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

All year I have been working my way through 2 Peter (by “accident”), but this morning I detour with Jesus to the region of Tyre and Sidon. I read the heart-stirring incident of magnificent faith and wonder about my own faith…and about Jesus’ generosity toward me.<\/p>\n

Here. You read it. The telling of a great faith that moved…a Phoenician woman:<\/p>\n

\n
    \n
  1. Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon.<\/li>\n
  2. And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.<\/li>\n
  3. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.<\/li>\n
  4. But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.<\/li>\n
  5. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.<\/li>\n
  6. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children\u2019s bread, and to cast it to dogs.<\/li>\n
  7. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters\u2019 table.<\/li>\n
  8. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.<\/li>\n
  9. And Jesus departed from thence, and came nigh unto the sea of Galilee; and went up into a mountain, and sat down there.<\/li>\n
  10. And great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus\u2019 feet; and he healed them:<\/li>\n
  11. Insomuch that the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see: and they glorified the God of Israel.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n

    I know the record here hits a high point, skipping over many details. But I’m blessed that “Jesus went thence” (21), made a Canaanite woman’s daughter whole, and “departed from thence” (31). Browsing backward through Matthew to find His last stated geographic location, I find “the land of Gennesaret” (Matthew 14:34). That’s on the east side of the Jordan River. It looks to me like Jesus skipped a direct route to the Sea of Galilee and made a big, long loop out close to the Mediterranean Sea in order to give a crumb to a dog, as it were. Wow!<\/p>\n

    My heart sings at the woman’s faith and tenacity. She didn’t turn away from Jesus’ “insensitive, rude, racist rejections” — nope, none of that quitting stuff for her. Listen… <\/p>\n

    “Have mercy on me, Lord. I believe You are the promised Son of David.”<\/p>\n

    Silence.<\/p>\n

    She keeps asking for help, driving the disciples to distraction.<\/p>\n

    Jesus finally speaks to her: “I was sent to help Israelites, not Cannanites.”<\/p>\n

    “Lord, I worship You. Please, help me<\/em> too!”<\/p>\n

    “It wouldn’t be right for Me to give to you (of all people) that which is meant for God’s own chosen people.”<\/p>\n

    “You are right, Lord. But may I have some of the few little pieces of leftovers that God’s children will sweep away anyway? Just a crumb, Lord? Please, that’s all I need.”<\/p>\n

    “You have such great faith! I grant you what you wish.”<\/p><\/div>\n

    And those few little crumbs sufficed to drive away a demon! I believe that mother “glorified the God of Israel”<\/em> every bit as much as the Israelites did.<\/p>\n

    \"This<\/a><\/p>\n

    Suppose Jesus gave me only the scattered crumbs left over from someone else’s meal. Would that unmerited generosity be sufficient to my need? Yes! But…I pause at the all-too-familiar snag. You know the one, I’m sure: I know He can, but I don’t know if He will.<\/em><\/p>\n

    I have huge needs. I look at them and stagger. So I look away and move along, doing the best I can to be faithful under their weight. I believe Jesus will help me, but I don’t know what form that help will take. So far, it has not taken the form I think I need for my need. (Yes, I sigh sometimes.)<\/p>\n

    This Canaanite mother believed in Jesus’ power<\/em>. She also trusted His heart<\/em>. So did many of the multitude at the end of this account.<\/p>\n

    I do too. I believe even stray pieces of His power to be more than enough. I believe even crunched crumbs of His grace suffice.<\/p>\n

    Now what?<\/p>\n

    Do I have faith that moves…me?<\/p>\n

    Eight years ago yesterday I blogged briefly about this same passage in Faith That Moves God<\/a>! CLP must be recycling their Sunday School lessons for their youth\/adult quarterlies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The ample sufficiency of unmerited generosity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[38,41,78,106],"class_list":{"0":"post-2178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-matthew","7":"tag-blessing","8":"tag-faith","9":"tag-prayer","10":"tag-sunday-school","11":"h-entry","12":"hentry","13":"h-as-article"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prJBV-z8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/pantinghart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}