Mark 7:25-30 For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet:… "I am not sent but to Israel," said Jesus. "She came," not with an argument, but a prayer that involved an argument, "and worshipped Him, saying, Lord, help me!" She no longer calls Him Son of David, for her object was to rise from the Son of David to the Son of God, from the Messiah of the Jew to the Messiah of the world — to "the Lord" in the simple majesty of the name, yea, to "the mighty God, the Father of the everlasting age, the Prince of peace." She, therefore, designates Him by the vaster and ampler title, and adds to her designation "worship." She insinuated that "the Lord" had power above His commission; that this plenipotentiary of heaven could at will transcend the terms of His instructions; and by that omnipotence which ruled the world it had created, she invoked Him, "Lord, help me!" But even this is ineffective. Faith must see more than power; and the Canaanite must pay a price for being the model of the Church to come. Like Him she implored, she must be "made perfect through sufferings." For, alas, omnipotence acts by mysterious and often exclusive laws; though the agent be almighty, the object may be unfit for its operation; the same power that bade Carmel blossom left Sinai a desert. "It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs;" "Let the children (St. Mark adds) first be filled!" But now for a bolder flight of the eagle wing, and a keener glance of the eagle eye of faith. She springs from the supreme control to the benevolent equity of providence. She rises above the clouds of the Divine power, often, to us who can only see them from below, dark, disturbed, and stormy, into the holy serenity beyond them. She sees the calm Sovereign of the universe, partial, yet impartial too; preferring some, yet forgetting none. She knows that "His care is over all His works," and — deepest wonder of her heaven-sent enlightenment — she can see that He loves her, and yet accord His unquestionable right to love, if He please it, others more; allows she can ask but little, yet believingly dares to pronounce that little certain! She will permit (would to God we could always follow her in our speculations!) no mystery of dispensation to contradict the truth of the Divine character. "Truth, Lord," is her retort, for the calmness of her settled convictions left her power to point her reply: "Truth, Lord! yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table." Everything is here. All Christianity is concentrated in one happy sentence. She believes in her own lowliness: she believes in God's absolute supremacy; she believes in the secret propriety of the apparent inequalities of His providence; she believes that those inequalities can never affect the true universality of His love. God is all, yet she is something too, for she is God's creature. Men from deep places can see the stars at noon-day; and from the utter depths of her self-abasement she catches the whole blessed mystery of heaven: like St. Paul's Christian, "in having nothing, she possesses all things." (W. A. Butler, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet: |
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