It was Christmas Eve 1914. World War I was raging. Entrenched French, Belgian and English soldiers were fighting the Germans. An amazing thing happened. The German soldiers set a few tiny Christmas trees and lighted candles on the edges of their trenches. Out of the sounds of war, the sound of singing began. The Germans were singing the best known Christmas carol which had come from their people, “Silent Night.”

Moved by this audacious act, identifying with it because of their own experience, memory, and longing, some allied troops crawled out of their holes to watch and listen...and then to join the singing.

Miraculously, a brief unofficial truce followed. Between Christmas and New Year, most of the fighting ceased, each side buried their dead, and some records say there were a few soccer games going on.

I’ve told that story at least five or six times in Christmas sermons over the past 40 years. I haven’t thought of it in years, until a few days ago. A columnist, Leonard Pitts, wrote about it in an article commemorating Woodstock. He was talking about the power of singing, contending the participants at Woodstock, “authored what amounts to a statement of faith in the power of all of us, singing harmony and getting by with a little help from our friends. Granted, it is a statement strikingly out of key in an era where music is more often associated with product placement than the healing of divisions. More to the point, it is a statement that bespeaks hapless youth and hopeless naiveté. Who among us is still young enough to think you can sing peace into being?

"If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you" (John 15:7).

It is one of those stupendous promises of Jesus that even when we muster the faith to be­lieve it, we remain baffled, and we don't lay hold of the promise often enough. Let the word about prayer stand as it is. Go on, focus on this one truth: If we abide in Christ all the rewards of dwelling in him are ours. An­swered prayer? Yes! Guidance for our daily living? Yes! Certainty in the midst of confusion? Yes! Strength to be more than conquerors of him who loves us? Yes!

"If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask." It is a clear word about relationship. Sometimes we can get a glimpse of the depth of that relationship with Christ in a human relationship...

What would you think if I told you that on your tombstone would be inscribed a four-word epitaph? Well, you might respond, it would depend on who would write this epitaph an enemy or a loved one. It might also depend, you might say, on how well this person knew and understood you. If a newspaper critic wrote of a concert pianist the four words: "He was a failure," you could always say: That was his opinion. But if one of the world's great musicians wrote, “He was a genius,” then you are apt to take the remark more seriously.

There was a character in the Gospel who Jesus once described with four immortal words: Great is your faith. She was a Canaanite woman who came from the country to the north of Palestine, a country hostile to the Jews. She was presumably married, she had at least one child; but that’s all we know about her. We don't know whether she was a good woman or a bad woman. We don’t know her name. All we know of her is that in this single encounter with Jesus he spoke to her this four-word epitaph: Great is your faith.

Only four words but they are enough to make her immortal. We can trust these words as being true because the expert on faith spoke them. Jesus searched for faith, as a gem collector would fine jewels. He did not always find it in his disciples. On no occasion that we know did he ever say of Peter, James, and John: Great is your faith. More often the words he spoke to them: You of little faith. On only one other occasion did Jesus praise a person for their faith. Interestingly, that was a Roman soldier stationed in Capernaum.

We regard this Canaanite woman with more than just an academic interest. She awakens in us a feeling of admiration, perhaps even envy, because she stands where most of us would like to stand. What faithful Christian would not like it said of him or her: Great is your faith? Think of what it would mean if an aspiring young artist had Picasso place his hand on his shoulder and say: You have a great talent. How wonderful it would be then to a believer in God, if Jesus would place his hand on our shoulder and say: You have a remarkable talent for faith. But how does one qualify for this praise? What does one have to do? To answer these questions let us take a closer look at her story.

1. Crossing Barriers
2. Refusing to Be Put Off
3. Going in Faith and Humility