“A Gentile woman who lived there came to him, pleading, ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord! For my daughter is possessed by a demon that torments her severely’…Then his disciples urged him to send her away. ‘Tell her to go away,’ they said. ‘She is bothering us with all her begging.”
Matthew 15:22-23 NLT
For some reason I grew up with an unhealthy fear that I might bother someone. One of my most-lines was, “I don’t want to bother you…”
So, when the disciples said, “She is bothering us…” I immediately felt for that Gentile woman! Most likely I would have never approached Jesus in the first place for that very reason—I wouldn’t want to bother Him! Actually, if I had been standing in that woman’s sandals and heard what the disciples said, I would have run back home as fast as possible!
But evidently, Jesus did NOT consider the woman a bother. In fact, I noticed in verse 21, Jesus left Galilee and went north to the region of Tyre and Sidon, and in verse 29 He returned to the Sea of Galilee. Between those two verses, Matthew recorded only this one story. So, could it be that Jesus left Galilee and traveled that long distance through the hills to Tyre, just to heal one woman’s daughter? What love He demonstrated—for someone others considered a bother!
Therefore, my assumption that I might be a bother is as false as the disciples’ assumption. If Jesus would travel all those difficult kilometers on foot because He knew ONE person needed a miracle, then bother must not be part of Jesus’ vocabulary!
In fact, NOBODY is a bother to Jesus!
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