I am glad I am a dust producer. Dust is often simply the dead skin cells we have sloughed off as new, fresh ones are made. Dust producers get to grow and change gradually, one cell at a time.
Imagine what it must be like to be a snake, for instance, that sheds all his skin at the same time. It must really be irritating if not painful.
There are times when we grow more like those creatures that have to shed all their skin at the same time. Not physically, of course, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually we may reach a point in our life where we are called to make wholesale changes in the way we perceive the world and react to people.
Have you ever experienced something so profound that you said, “I’ll never be the same again”? The experience effected us at so many levels that change was quick and permanent.
Jesus’ confrontation with the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15 may have been one of those experiences. Matthew had recorded that Jesus had already fed five thousand. After experiencing of the Canaanite woman‘s amazing faith, Jesus goes to a similar region and ends up healing many and feeding four thousand. The major difference was that the latter crowd seems to have been gentiles, not Jews. It was like a reinforcement of what the woman had said. Jews were not the only ones looking for a Messiah and Jesus was willing to change.
When our comfortable world view gets disrupted, it is time to shed some skin and grow rapidly, especially when it includes opportunities to given even more grace to many more people. Shedding a few skin cells at a time may not cut it.