Stupid Geese

Our house is a street up from Meyers Lake and so many of our neighbors are Canadian Geese.  The geese visit the lake, but they feed and breed in our neighborhood.  The other day, during my walk, I passed by two geese.  They were both drinking from a drainage pipe.  A small stream of water that had traveled off the roof of a home, down into an eave spout, into a drainage tile that was buried underground and was now ending its journey on 21^st Street was now a water fountain for two geese.  I shook my head as I walked by and thought, “These two geese have all of Meyer’s lake at their disposal and they are sipping water out of a drainage tile.”

As I walked a little farther, the Holy Spirit began to apply the thought to my own life.  God’s love and power could fill an infinite number of Meyers Lakes; am I drinking of its depths or have I settled for drinking the little I can slurp up off the street?  It reminded me of Matthew 15:21-28:

“Jesus left Galilee and went to the area of Tyre and Sidon.  A woman from Canaan lived near Tyre and Sidon. She came to him and cried out, “Lord! Son of David! Have mercy on me! A demon controls my daughter. She is suffering terribly.”

Jesus did not say a word. So his disciples came to him. They begged him, “Send her away. She keeps crying out after us.”

Jesus answered, “I was sent only to the people of Israel. They are like lost sheep.”

Then the woman fell to her knees in front of him. “Lord! Help me!” she said.

He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

“Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their owner’s table.”

Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! You will be given what you are asking for.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

In this conversation you cannot miss the satire.  Jesus is not being rude or demeaning.  No, he is speaking tongue in cheek.  He has a smirk on his face that the woman can see and so she plays right along saying that even the dogs eat the crumbs from the table. 

Here this woman, a non-Jew, Canaanite woman, who the Jews of the day looked upon as dogs, was coming to Jesus to drink of his mercy.  The disciples wanted Jesus to rid them of her because this “dog” was bothering them.  Instead Jesus engages in this sarcastic conversation to make a point.  The point is this that the sheep of Israel have been given a feast on the table and they are living on the crumbs of self-righteousness, legalism and religion.  But this spiritual “dog” comes looking for the crumbs and she ends up walking away with more of God’s left-over boxes full mercy than the lost sheep of Israel who should know better. 

What about us?  Are we surviving on crumbs or pulling up a seat at the buffet? Are we sipping water out of a drainage tile or splashing in the lake?