Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy
Welcome to Day 799 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
Small Things Can Have a Big Impact – Meditation Monday


Thank you for joining us for our five days per week wisdom and legacy building podcast. This is Day 799 of our Trek, and it is time for Meditation Monday.  Taking time to relax, refocus, and reprioritize our lives is crucial in order to create a living legacy.  For some, it may just be time alone for quiet reflection.  Some may utilize structured meditation practices. In my life meditation includes reading and reflecting on God’s Word, and in prayer.  It is a time to renew my mind, refocus on what is most important, and making sure that I am nurturing my soul, mind, and body.  As you come along with me on our trek each Meditation Monday, it is my hope an prayer that you too will experience a time for reflection and renewing of your mind.

 

We are broadcasting from our studio at ‘The Big House’ in Marietta, OH. Throughout the Scriptures, God uses the example of small things that have a great impact.  Some of these are ants, the tongue, and a rudder on a ship. In language, changing just a single letter in a word in some instances can change the entire meaning.  In today’s meditation, we will explore how our faith, even though it may be small can produce huge results
Small Things Can Have a Big Impact
During Jesus’s ministry on earth, He talked about how important a person's heart is. Mark 7:1-23 is just one example is one example that we will review in a moment.  The Jewish religious leaders had made all sorts of rules to be sure the people of God kept themselves ritually clean. Matthew and Mark placed Jesus’s words about the importance of the heart right before the events we will read about today. This sequence can help you see a key point Jesus made in His life. While Jesus’s earthly ministry was focused primarily on Jews, "the lost sheep of Israel" (Matthew 15:24), He reached out to all kinds of people who were normally considered "unclean" by many fellow Jews.

Tyre and Sidon were places where old enemies of the Jewish people lived. Jesus’s very presence there, especially with His ministry to these non-Jews, was very shocking. Then Jesus traveled back to Decapolis or "the area of the Ten Cities," another largely non-Jewish area on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus blessed, taught, and healed in this region just as He did in Tyre and Sidon. The focus of Jesus’s work was once again on people's hearts. Were they open and receptive? Were they seeking after God? Did they long for grace? Jesus’s focus was not on culture, nationality, or ethnicity. He was willing to help, bless, and be with people who His fellow Jews considered "unclean"!

This background of our scripture today is very important for you to know when we read the following story of the woman from Syrophoenicia. Jesus’s words are a little distorted by our modern translations because you can't hear the subtle nuance of one letter. The little "i" in Greek makes a big difference and turns the word for a dog (kunaron) into the word for a puppy (kunarion) and changes Jesus’s words from an ugly ethnic slur into an invitation for faith. Even today, so often people of different ethnic groups use slurs to dismiss the value of another person. Jesus used a play on words similar to an ethnic slur to invite the woman from Syrophoenicia to display both her wit and her faith. She was desperate and wanted help. She came expecting to be called a strange and mangy dog — the way many Jews would have referred to her and she would have referred to them. However, Jesus took the term and softened it to mean puppy or lap dog — something that was often considered a part of the family. She instantly seized on this play on words. Instead of taking offense,