Matthew 8

Today's reading is Matthew 8.  And as much as I want to feel like there is something I learned from it all I can think about is that once again there is a phrase I thought was some crazy thing my dad always said that turns out to be from the Bible.  "You of little faith..."  turns out to be from Matthew 8:26. Any time there was doubt or something questionable, out came that phrase from my dad.  For those who may not know, Jesus joined his disciples on a boat, Jesus fell asleep, a big storm came and was tossing them around scaring the tar out of the disciples.  So they woke Jesus up saying, "Save us, we are going to drown!" For those that may not know my dad, Tommy Sparks, he was a Lutheran pastor.  To me growing up he was just a silly dad with silly things he would say.  As I age I've been learning which of those phrases were from the Bible and which were his 'old west Texas sayings'.

The rest of Matthew 8 has other stories of Jesus healing people and driving out demons.  When Jesus drives out the demons from two men into a herd of pigs, the pigs then run into the sea and drown.  If I owned those pigs I would not have been happy that I lost my whole herd.  The Jews consider pigs to be unclean and don't eat of them but I'm a bacon lover. ;o)  All in all, have faith.  Faith is what got a man with leprosy healed, a soldiers servant healed, demons driven out, and many others healed from their ailments.  So in the words of Jesus, "You of little faith, why are you so afraid?"  Just have faith.