ONE CANDLE LIGHTS THE DARKNESS
24 Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. 25 In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an impure spirit came and fell at his feet. 26 The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.
27 “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
28 “Lord,” she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
29 Then he told her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.”
30 She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. Mark 7:24-30
This is a remarkable story of deliverance from a tormenting spirit in a child. The fact of its presence in the young girl is not explained. How did the spirit get there? Did the child have a traumatic experience that opened her to demonic oppression? Was it a familial spirit she inherited from a parent or grandparent? Did she meddle with the occult through ignorance? Did pagan religious practices open her to demons? There is no way of knowing how the demon entered her and Jesus did not try to find out from her mother.
From the many healing and deliverance miracles recorded in the gospels, we realise that it was never an issue with Jesus how people got into situations that needed His help. Time after time He healed and set people free from their afflictions regardless of how they got there. That implies that He is more concerned about the present and the future than the past.
Healing is not about guilt and blame. It’s about freedom. It’s about overcoming and overthrowing the work of Satan in people’s lives. It’s about undoing the devil’s work and setting people on a new path towards God. It’s about making “up there” come “down here” so that people can taste the beauty and joy of God’s kingdom right here in the world where the dominion of darkness has reigned for millennia.
What transformation did Jesus’ mercy bring into that home? Although His focus was on “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”, this was only the beginning. His light would shine to the ends of the earth through the new life that He would bring to His own people It’s always like that, God renewing the life of His own people so that they will shine the light where there is darkness and death in the earth. Jesus lit a candle in a pagan community and only eternity will reveal just how far that tiny light shed its beams across the pagan world.