March 5
A Canaanite in the House of the Lord
In the Hour of Silence"Behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts."
SORROW is Christ's angel. The mother's home grief, and broken heart, and helplessness, and despair of ordinary methods of cure—the hand and the will and the person of the Good Physician were in them all. They were storms of His arranging, designed to strand her at last on the Rock of Ages. Is it not why He afflicts me to-day?
Delay is Christ's incentive. I cry to Him, and cry again. But the heavens are like impenetrable brass over my head, and no answer comes. It is hard to bear, yet it is meant in love. He would have me cling closer. He would have me ask more earnestly. He would have me take the kingdom by force. And, when at length He blesses me, "a moment's intercourse with Him my grief will overpay."
The heathen are Christ's other sheep. If they are dogs, they are the little dogs of His household, eating the crumbs which fall from His table, not so far removed from Him as they seem. They are capable of rising into faith, love, holiness, service; them also He must bring. And surely I will sympathise with Him and with them, and will seek to draw them and Him together.
The healed soul is Christ's missionary. Was not this mother the author of the Church in Tyre, about which we read in later Scriptures? Having freely received, she freely gave. It is why I am redeemed, blessed, crowned. It is that I may be the evangelist and messenger of my Saviour. "Potent with the spell of heaven," I am to go and entice my brothers home.