As I studied the lessons for this week, especially the first lesson from Is. 35 and the Gospel from Mark 7, I was struck by the contrasts.

The first contrast was between those beautiful words, "Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy." and its context. I’d sung that recitative and aria, "He Shall Feed His Flock" from Handel’s Messiah many times when I was younger. It speaks to me of hope and joy and the aria always made me feel protected and at peace. The recitative and aria picture people cured of disabilities being cared for by the Good Shepherd.

Contrast this with the picture given in Isaiah of a God who comes in a fury, wrecking vengeance on Israel’s captors. The outcome for the people of Israel is the same as in the Handel work, but the violence of those surrounding verses wreck my sense of peace.

Next contrast the Messiah described by the prophets with the Messiahship of Jesus. The Messiah looked for by the people of Israel was a mighty king who would destroy Israel’s enemies and restore the nation to greatness.

Now, contrast this confrontation with the other confrontations we know of in Scripture. Jesus seems gentler even with his enemies than with this poor woman. Bible scholars can debate for days what is behind the seeming rudeness with which He treats this woman. Did Jesus humanity take over? Was He just having a bad day? Was He testing her faith? Was this just a literary device of the writer of Mark and not actually what Jesus said to her or only part of it?

We’ll never know, but the contrast in how He treated her and how He treated others is striking.

We can also contrast the two healings. We have man versus woman, a mother’s personal pain over her child versus the actions of friends. We have Jesus seeming reluctance to heal versus His immediate response. We have a public versus private miracle. We have long distance healing versus Jesus’ intimate touching of the person.

And all of these contrasts bring us to the contrasts in how Jesus acts in our lives. The Old Testament or simply human desire may lead us to expect a mighty Messiah who will wreck vengeance on our enemies, whether the enemy is Saddam Hussein, a person enemy or natural enemies like sickness and death. By contrast, terrorists sometimes get away scott-free, those who wound us personally seem to go on without a moment’s regret and sickness and death take their toll daily.

We also get caught in the contrast between expectation and reality. Most of us start out our adult lives with great expectations. We will get a high paying, satisfying job; marry the person of our dreams, have beautiful children, live the good life and die peacefully in our sleep when very old. Yes, our will be the life lived happily ever after.

Contrast that with the reality of working harder and harder for less pay, the number of divorces each year (not to mention those who drag along in unhappy marriages), our real children who have dirty diapers, earaches, naughty streaks and even a tendency to fail us. We learn quickly there just is no "happily ever after" in this life.

Now, we come to that most difficult of all contrasts. It seems that some people enjoy God’s favor. Things generally go well for them, and even if they don’t - say they get sick - Jesus seems to come to the rescue quickly.

By contrast, many of us can better identify with the Syrophoenician woman. We get hit with some of the worst life can dish out and when we ask Jesus for help, we can’t help but wonder if He’s rejected us. Worse yet, we don’t get a miracle even after struggling with Him in prayer.

But, this is where the contrasts end.

Because Jesus was the suffering Savior in contrast to a mighty Messiah, His victory was for all time and all people; not just a few Jewish exiles long ago and not just for just for some people who seem to get all the breaks.

Because Jesus doesn’t meet our very limited expectations, but in contrast exceeds them, we enjoy blessings beyond compare. We need only open ears and eyes to become aware of them.

Because Jesus waits to struggle with us in contrast to just giving us all we want, we benefit from a deeper relationship with Him.

Because we have a real, live Savior who was both God and man, in contrast to having a God who is always "out there", untouched by human experience, we have assurance that He cares deeply for us and is with us in every struggle.