Suffering

There was a woman.  Well, I mean, that's bad enough right?  And she was a foreigner.  She was Greek, probably by birth or parentage.  She had previously lived in Syro-phoenicia.  She begged Jesus to drive a demon out of her daughter.  Her daughter was suffering.  A suffering child.  Now, I know she's a foreigner, and Jews didn't have much truck with foreigners.  But here she is, a mother, with a suffering sick child.

And what does Jesus do?  He refuses!  He calls the woman a dog!  He calls the child, the suffering child, a dog!  Unworthy of being healed!

Well you know that the story goes on.  It doesn't finish there, but I'm using it in a sermon and I'm trying to make a point.  Every time that I get to this point in editing the sermon, I start crying!

It's very inconvenient.

Why on earth am I crying about this?  Well possibly because I am suffering at the moment, and God is not doing anything about it.  Am I unworthy of being healed?  Or even comforted?

I'm trying not to take this personally.  I am trying to remember that everything will be all right in the end and that if it is not yet all right then it is not yet the end.

But, it's hard, you know?