Numbers 13:1-2, 25 - 14:1, 26-29, 34-35 / Matthew 15:21-28
What a difference a day makes. Be it for better or for worse, one day can make a difference.
And those Israelites of the 1st reading would certainly affirm that statement to the letter.
The Lord had instructed them to reconnaissance the land of Canaan. At the end of forty day, they came back with their report.
They gave such a disparaging report of the land that the whole community of Israel raised their voices and cried aloud and the people wailed all night.
But they forgot that it was the land that the Lord promised to their ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
And so they paid the price for their forgetfulness and complaints. For each day that they went to reconnaissance the land, they were to wander in the wilderness for a year, and so that would add up to forty years, until the generation that wailed and complained against the Lord would perish in the desert sands.
It was a sad story of the Israelites not having faith in the Lord and rejecting the promised land of Canaan.
Yet in the gospel, it was a Canaanite woman who came to Jesus, the Promised One of God, and begged for the healing of her possessed daughter.
Though it was the Israelites who rejected the Promised Land and later the Promised One of God, it was a Canaanite who showed the faith that Jesus Himself would call "great".
May we too have that little faith to believe in God's promises in Jesus. If what a difference a day can make, then what a difference a little bit of faith can make.