At that time Jesus was filled with joy by the Holy Spirit and said, "Father, Lord of heaven and earth! I thank you because you have shown to the unlearned what you have hidden from the wise and learned. Yes, Father, this was how you were pleased to have it happen.

"My thoughts," says the LORD, "are not like yours, and my ways are different from yours.

Don't I have the right to do as I wish with my own money? Or are you jealous because I am generous?' "

The woman was a Gentile, born in the region of Phoenicia in Syria. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.

"Sir," she answered, "even the dogs under the table eat the children's leftovers!"

For he said to Moses, "I will have mercy on anyone I wish; I will take pity on anyone I wish."

But who are you, my friend, to talk back to God? A clay pot does not ask the man who made it, "Why did you make me like this?"

God did what he had purposed, and made known to us the secret plan he had already decided to complete by means of Christ.

All things are done according to God's plan and decision; and God chose us to be his own people in union with Christ because of his own purpose, based on what he had decided from the very beginning.

A prophet named Elijah, from Tishbe in Gilead, said to King Ahab, "In the name of the LORD, the living God of Israel, whom I serve, I tell you that there will be no dew or rain for the next two or three years until I say so."

After some time, in the third year of the drought, the LORD said to Elijah, "Go and present yourself to King Ahab, and I will send rain."

So Elijah started out. The famine in Samaria was at its worst,

Elijah was the same kind of person as we are. He prayed earnestly that there would be no rain, and no rain fell on the land for three and a half years.