I love the story of the Canaanite woman in today's gospel. It shows how God can use anyone--a foreigner, a woman in that patriarchal culture, the ostracized--to wake us up. We have Jesus saying he was directed only to "the lost sheep of the House of Israel" until his encounter with the Canaanite woman. That says to me that we need to be alert to unexpected, unlikely folks who appear in our lives, folks that don't look like us, folks from somewhere else. They may be carrying something more from God with our name on it.

The Beloved may reach us with surprises--if we are open to receive them. On any given morning, for example, when we are reading our daily scripture, we turn the page, and there it is! We've read the passage 100 times before and never noticed it. But we know it is our word from God on this day. Or we go out to get the morning newspaper and notice a tiny, white, star-shaped wildflower nestled in the grass. As we gaze at it, all of a sudden we are overwhelmed by the recognition of the Creator's hand at work in the tiniest, micro-bits of creation while extending to the farthest reaches of the cosmos. Or we are in a filled concert hall listening to a symphony. As the music soars, we are stunned to realize that, much like Thomas Merton on that street corner in Kentucky, we are all One--interconnected with Love.

You, no doubt, will think of other experiences when God picked you up and put you down in a new place in your journey, just as Jesus discovered that day with the Canaanite woman. There is always more for us to come to know on the way, and the Holy One is always faithful to provide just what we need, when we need it.