Jesus was tired. He spent much of his time trying to deal with the hurts of the masses. It was not uncommon for him to take a break to rest. On one occasion he slipped quietly into a house in an area called Tyre. Mark's gospel tells us he wanted it to be a quiet time. The problem was that a woman in town heard the gossip about his being there. Her daughter was demon possessed. We cannot easily imagine the emotional torture of her situation. She comes to the house, makes her way inside, then proceeds to ask Jesus for help. She also has a problem. Up to that point our Lord focused his attention on the Jewish people. She is a Gentile. The disciples even add to the chorus of criticism of her search. What will Jesus do? How will he answer her?

The surface reading of their dialogue sounds almost insulting. It is at the least not the type of answer we are accustomed to hearing from Jesus. Yet something very odd happens in their exchange. The mother who is at the end of her rope gets not only what she wants but what she needs. She endures the silence as well as criticism in her yearning for a miracle. Her faith is not shallow or superficial. It is faith that hangs in there when the easy road is to let go.

My mind wandered last week while traveling. Could we be like this brave woman? Far too much of what people call faith seems to be no more than wishful thinking. Our prayers may be met by a loud silence from God so we stop praying. Perhaps our prayers are answered in ways that we did not expect. We bring our requests to God like an order to be filled. He chooses to answer on occasion with a dialogue not dramatic displays. This frustrates us because we didn't truly want to talk to God. We just wanted something fixed. God wants to grow us in this relationship. Mature faith handles the silence or the dialogue as part of growing up. It means wanting to know God as much as we want someone to fix things for us. Now that would be dramatic.

Bro. Trey