Prayer

Great prayer meeting tonight.

Something I read last night came to mind again at the start of the prayer meeting. Martin Luther wrote about the Canaanite woman's story. (See Matthew 15:21-28 if you can't quite remember the story.)

Here's what Luther says about this story, and why it's in the Bible:

"This is written for our comfort and instruction that we may know how deeply God hides his grace from us and that we must not think of him according to our ideas and feeling, but only according to his Word. Here we see that though Christ speaks harshly he does not give a final judgment, an absolute 'no'... The 'no' sounds stronger than the 'yes,' but nevertheless ther was more there of 'yes' than of 'no', a pure 'yes', deep and secret."

"This shows the state of our heart when sore pressed. Christ in this story behaves the way the heart feels, for it thinks the answer is 'no' when in reality it is not. Therefore the heart must turn away from its feeling and lay hold of the deep, secret 'yes' under the 'no', with firm faith in God's Word, as did this woman." (emphasis is mine)

from The Book of Jesus, edited by Calvin Miller, page 278 ($10 at Barnes 7 Noble; what a deal!)

I'm still processing this. I can't help but feel Luther's right, but it's still hard for me to comprehend. God truly does act in mysterious but wonderful ways.