“Insistent Love” by Beth DeCristofaro
The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame. (Genesis 2:25)
The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first. For it is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” She replied and said to him, “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.” Then he said to her, “For saying this, you may go. The demon has gone out of your daughter.” (Mark 7:28-29)
Piety
Lord, it is so hard for me to be without shame for I know too well and realize that you see those places in my life I have chosen other than you. Help me offer you both my puniness and my desires. I rejoice that you love me insistently. May you act within me and through me so that I do not hoard the scraps off the table, the gifts given me by you, my God, with others.
Study
This Greek woman and others who beseeched the attention of Jesus show us what it is like to have no shame in pleading for our hearts’ desire. Being created in God’s image we are called to that which we, darkly, reflect, our Creator and our Sustainer. Even more, we are called by God who created us not only to love God but be loved by God. It is our very innermost self which craves to be one with God. Knowing and turning over our frailties which come of being fashioned out of the clay of the earth opens our hearts to God’s entering.
Did the Greek woman know that she was being impelled by a call from God? Most likely not. Rather, like the woman with hemorrhages who touched Jesus’ cloak and the blind Bartimaeus who called out insistently, their desires are couched in mortal terms (health, sight). Yet it is God who is at the root, the depth of those desires and it is God who calls their names insistently, lovingly. Can modern, pleading voices of refugees, survivors of gun violence, victims of abusive justice systems and others be calling out and seeking God through us?
C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, gives us a beautiful image: “God is the thing to which (a person) is praying - the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on – the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary (person who prays).”[i]
Action
Do I feel God’s insistent love is calling me?
How do I respond to the pleading, annoying or intrusive requests like the Greek woman?
[i] A Year with C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from his Classic Works, edited by Patricia Klein, Harper Collins, 2003, p 190.
Illustration: Christ and the Canaanite Woman, Ludovico Carracci. https://pinacotecabrera.org/en/collezione-online/opere/cristo-e-la-cananea/
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