Something dawned on me this week: maybe we should get in front of God. Maybe we should be more active in our interaction with God. The stuff we have going on in our lives is pretty important to us. And we think it is not very important to others; we may think it is not important to God. But I am learning that maybe it is worth getting in front of God and asking Him if it is important.

Mark 7:24-30 — And from there He arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And He entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet He could not be hidden. But immediately a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit heard of Him and came and fell down at His feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged Him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered Him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”And He said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

The underlying theme here is the temporal priority of the Jew versus the Gentile; the word “dogs” is derogatory, although not terribly offensive — more like “pets.” The Gentile woman clearly takes it all in stride with her response. But what fascinates me is her usage of the word “crumbs.” Having a sick daughter, in this case one possessed by a demon, is no minor thing. It is certainly not a crumb, or a leftover. To this woman, her sick daughter was the most important thing in the world at that moment. Yet she calls it a crumb. When she heard that Jesus was in her town she could have easily thought, “I am sure my problem is not important to Him.”

But instead, she decided to act: to get in front of God. We get the impression that when she found out that Jesus was around, she forced her way into His presence.

I believe this woman had an outstanding worldview. She understood her place in the world. She noticed that she had an opportunity to interact with Jesus and she did not take that for granted. She made sure that she got in the way of Jesus. It is like she was saying this: “Jesus, I know I do not deserve to be here in front of you. But I believe you can do something awesome — I trust you. And I am going to go ahead and ask you to do it.”

May we not forget that we do not deserve to be in front of Jesus. Yet by His grace, we are allowed into His presence on a continual basis. Maybe we should get in front of Him — maybe we should make sure we get in front of Him.

Tags: devotion, God, grace, Jesus, worldview

This entry was posted by zac on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 at 6:33 pm and is filed under Weekly Jib Jab. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.