Jesus can be really offensive sometimes.  He acknowledges and even calls out sins in others, He seems to go out of His way to lambaste the Pharisees, and even His own family isn’t free of His insulting illustrations.  “Who are my mother and brothers?  Those who do the will of my Father.”  Ouch.

Here again, Jesus’ interaction with the Canaanite woman seems pretty insensitive.  She comes asking for help for her little girl and Jesus simply ignores her.  When asked by the disciples about it, He says that He’s here for the Jews, not the Gentiles.  After studying Paul for so long with his constant insistence that there isn’t a difference between Jew and Gentile, it seems odd for Jesus to seemingly dismiss the Gentile community out of hand.  After all, didn’t He do exactly this kind of healing for a Roman centurion just a few chapters ago?

It gets worse as she approaches Jesus herself.  She rightfully assumes a position of pleading, kneeling before Him, yet still Jesus refuses.  The metaphor of the children’s bread going to the dogs seals His statement made to the disciples that He is here for the Jews alone.  Yet the woman persists.  “Not so, Lord.  The dogs do get the children’s crumbs.”

Rather than looking at Jesus for our example, let’s look more closely at this woman.  Though a Gentile, she comes to this Jewish Rabbi for help.  It’s amazing what our desperation will lead us to do.  She then proceeds to pester Him until He will listen, even after He ignores her and His followers attempt to shoo her away.  Then, when rebuffed, she doesn’t get offended, or call Him out for His rude comment, but keeps pressing.  This is the parable of the persistent widow played out in real life.

And in the end, Jesus sees her trust in Him and rewards her for it.  “Your request is granted,” He says and her daughter is healed immediately.

As we pray, let us learn from his woman and the persistent widow and never give up.  Keep praying, keep faith, and then wait to see just what God might do.

Change always seems to be a slow process.  That includes changing one’s mind.  Moses, in his epic argument with God at the burning bush, has to be slowly, argument by argument, moved down the path toward resigned agreement.  From “I’m not important enough” to “I don’t know You” to “they won’t believe me” to “I don’t talk good” to finally, “just send someone else, please”, God has to respond to all of these excuses as Moses slowly moves from No Way to Ok.  Good thing God is patient.

But it’s not just Moses we see moving slowly toward the inevitable conclusion.  Pharaoh does the same thing… twice.  First, it is his trust in his court magicians.  When Aaron’s staff becomes a snake, the magicians do the same and Pharaoh laughs at this man of God.  It’s the same when the Nile turns to blood, though Pharaoh’s reaction is more angry this time.  When Aaron brings frogs out of the Nile, however, Pharaoh is beginning to learn.  When his magicians do the same thing, he nonetheless turns to Aaron and Moses for relief.  “Pray to the Lord to take the frogs away.”  And sure enough, the next plague of gnats cannot be reproduced, and Pharaoh loses his trust in his magicians.

The other slow change is in Pharaoh’s willingness to let the Hebrews go.  From their first encounter where Pharaoh makes the word even harder on the Hebrews to their last where he finally gives in and chases them out of Egypt, Pharaoh slowly changes his mind.  And even then he is quick to recant this change, but that is a story for a later day.

Seldom do we change our minds quickly, and the larger or more important the issue, the slower the change.  Some have likened this to an ocean liner changing course when we expect a speedboat’s maneuverability.  When someone you know is pondering God’s big questions in life, give them time.  Change always seems to be a slow process, and that includes changing one’s mind.