08/23/2026

The Gospel story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman can be unsettling. We like to think of Jesus as the epitome of the “nice guy,” especially when he encounters people who are suffering or in need. Yet in this encounter, Jesus seems unusually distant, even resistant, to the desperate plea of a mother asking him to heal her daughter.

Rather than getting stuck on the difficulty of the dialogue, however, I think it is important to focus on what ultimately happens: a mother comes to Jesus in faith, pleading for help, and her petition is granted. She trusted in the goodness of Jesus. She persisted when the answer did not come easily. And her persistence paid off. That may be the heart of this Gospel: persistent prayer changes us.

Think about what happens when a child first learns to read. At first, a child can manage only short, simple books. If we place a long and complicated novel in front of that child, it can be overwhelming. The problem is not that the book is uninteresting or beautiful. The child simply does not yet have the capacity to receive it. So the child practices. Vocabulary grows. Attention span increases. The child becomes comfortable reading for longer periods of time. And something fascinating happens along the way: as the child’s capacity to read grows, so does the child’s desire to read.

If the child persists—sitting down again and again with the written word—something that once seemed intimidating begins to make sense. A big, thick book that once looked impossible can eventually become a source of fascination and joy.

The same thing can happen spiritually. Persistence in prayer can increase our desire for what we are praying about, while at the same time enlarging our capacity to receive whatever God wishes to give us. The spiritual masters have long recognized that prayer does not always change the situation for which we are praying. Sometimes, through persistent prayer, God changes the person who is praying. God may be preparing our hearts to receive something he has been trying to give us all along.

This is especially important when the answer to our prayer is “no.” The more persistently we pray, the greater our capacity can become to accept God’s answer—even when it is not the answer we hoped for. Persistent prayer can deepen our trust that God sees what we cannot see and knows what we cannot know.

But persistence in prayer also increases our capacity to receive God’s “yes.” Even when God grants our prayer in the way we originally presented it, something may have happened within us while we were waiting. The waiting itself may have changed us. It may help us experience the answer more deeply—to recognize it, appreciate it, and understand it as a gift rather than simply as an outcome we managed to obtain.

That is why perseverance in prayer is so important. We trust that our perseverance leads us toward God’s response, and we trust that God’s response will ultimately be the response we need, even when it is not the response we expected.

This theme of trust continues from last week’s Gospel. Last Sunday, Peter had to trust Jesus enough to step out of the boat and walk upon the water. Today, the Canaanite woman demonstrates a similar kind of trust. She steps into the conversation with Jesus even when the conversation becomes turbulent. She does not walk away. She continues to place her trust in him.

There is something of Peter’s experience in our own prayer. When we place a petition in Jesus’ hands, we are stepping out of the boat. We are putting our foot onto the water. We are saying, in effect, “I trust you with this.” And sometimes that requires tremendous faith.

We keep asking, even when we do not understand what God is doing. We keep praying, even when it seems as though nothing is happening. We persist—not necessarily because we expect to change God’s mind, but because we trust that God is doing something in us while we wait.

Perhaps God is enlarging our hearts. Perhaps he is deepening our desire. Perhaps he is increasing our capacity to receive whatever gift he is trying to give us.

At the end of the day, then, this Gospel is not a story about Jesus toying with a desperate mother. It is a story about a loving God accompanying someone whose persistence is growing her faith, deepening her desire, and enlarging her capacity to receive the gift God wishes to give.

And perhaps that is what God is doing in our prayer as well. So we persist. We keep asking. We keep trusting. We keep praying. Because sometimes our persistence is not about changing God’s will, but about allowing God to align our will with his. Sometimes it is not about changing God’s heart, but about allowing God to enlarge our hearts.

And sometimes our persistence in prayer opens our minds and hearts to recognize that God has already answered us—we simply were not yet ready to see the answer.

The Canaanite woman trusted enough to keep coming to Jesus. May we have that same trust: the courage to ask, the patience to persist, and the faith to believe that whatever God gives us, he gives as a loving Father who knows what we truly need.

- Rev. James F. Hurlbert