In Exodus 4:10, Moses says to the Lord that he is slow of speech and cannot be used for God’s purposes, but God disagreed. In Mark 7, we read about how a man is deaf and speechless and God opened his ears and mouth and he spoke plainly after that.

This passage always bothered me, but the Matthew Henry Commentary helped me understand this better. Jesus is saying that the Jewish nation has the primary place in receiving the miracles He is doing. The Greeks, like the woman we read about in today’s passage, “have been snarling at them, spiteful toward them, and ready to worry them.”  There is a deep and bitter history between the Greeks and Jews.

I was once in a small village in a developing nation and in this particular village they had no running water, but there was a stream behind the hundreds of shanties built up along the hillside. I looked into the narrow valley and it was hard to imagine surviving there; it was a combination of trash, sewage, and wandering dogs sniffing through the piles that were lying in standing pools of greyish backend water.

I love a really good sharp kitchen knife, and I keep mine sharp because using a dull knife is exhausting, and useless. The sharp words of Jesus in today’s passage cut to the heart of the matter quickly, but the disciples were confused and Jesus asked, “Are you so dull?” (Mark 7:18).

Last fall at the Foundry Church we learned, and hopefully, became people who were all about living in Coram Deo. Living in Coram Deo means living every moment of your life in the presence of God, under submission to God, and for the glory of God.