I like to think that the Bible challenges cliche - in the sense that The New Testament Gospels show Jesus challenging a woman's understanding of who he is, and that a woman who was not an Israelite and who therefore had no reason to count herself among the people of God according to the Jewish faith, culture or tradition.
In a sense I read the passage recounted in Mark 7:24-30 as Jesus challenging the woman to think beyond the accepted morality and, by implication by faith, overcome the fact that she was not culturally positioned to inherit the kingdom of God, the same situation of many of the people Jesus met and healed (the Centurion, the widow and her son) and yet who were welcomed into it because inheritance there was not conferred by tradition or history. Similarly, as the apostle Paul went to 'gentile' or 'Greek' non-Jewish peoples and told them the gospel, many who were not the heirs according to history, became 'co-heirs in a glorious promise'.
He challenges her to think for herself, rather than allow others to impose their own morality on her - indeed first she "begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter" (v26), before he posed the saying "First let the children eat all they want...for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs"(v27). She was desperate, one imagines, and must have been convinced that this stranger, maybe, had the power to save her daughter.
How she knew this isn't made clear; we simply aren't told in the passage any of the surrounding details, only the exchange. But she believed that he held this power, and that her daughter, in a desperate condition, could be healed if he were willing. This is a big thing to believe, but the saying Jesus may be invoking here (the IVP commentary suggests that it was a popular saying of the time) must have challenged her belief; Jesus seems to be saying that his healing ministry was for the Jewish people, which of course is true, but potentially was not for other ethnic groups.
This isn't strictly so - and you could maybe argue that the saying was indicating the future spreading of the gospel to other non-Jewish groups after Jesus' death.
Now, the woman could have slunk off at this point, despondent and hurt by Jesus' answer. But you get the impression that she may have heard the saying before, because her answer counters it: "Yes, Lord," she replied, "but even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs"(v28).
It might have been easier for her to go on her way and return to the horrific situation that plagued her and her daughter, accepting what Jesus said both as a man with more power than herself and therefore authority over he intellectually in that culture, and accepting that he just didn't understand.

But she didn't. Instead she challenged what he said with her own understanding, which didn't come from arrogance or the conviction that she was right, but from faith. In fact, she had so much faith in Jesus that she was willing to offer a counter argument to the argument he produced himself! What she wanted was her daughter to be healed; she identified that Jesus could do this, and wouldn't take no for an answer, however pithy the saying used to justify it was.

I suppose the point is, I wonder how many times this is still an issue for Christians, how much we have to use our critical faculties and search for the real Jesus Christ amid the particular traditions and sayings of our own churches, organisations and even friends and family. How whenever someone tells us something is 'impossible' or 'not the done thing here' we have to make the choice between accepting this against our convictions, or looking deeper into the revealed saviour's life and words to find answers there.

There is a danger, of course, that we will assert our own views to the point of arrogance, and of course this is all a delicate balance. But that isn't what's happening in this passage, and that's important to remember - the woman's convictions came from her faith in Christ, ultimately, and therefore when approaching things in this way, so should ours.

The future: so what of it?
I'm struck by the verse in the book of James (4:13-17) that I looked at as part of a Bible study that I occasionally lead within the CU.

"Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins."

The future, sorry the Future, is on my mind really quite a lot at the moment. I just can't puzzle it out; where will I be next year, what will I be doing, who with, how? I know I have a house I'm staying in for another year at least, but beyond that I have no real clear-sighted, firm or definite plan.
Of course as a Christian it's easy to pick up clues from other people about how you're supposed to approach future plans; look solemn or pious and state that you're 'trusting God', 'and it's all in his hands'. But often I think I just say this because I think it's the 'right answer' - it's something I've heard other people say.

But how much do I actually do it? How much do I believe it?

It's easy to mutter some vague comments about maybe travelling or spending more time writing or just getting a job to pay the rent and seeing what happens - so easy in fact that it's what I fall into doing at least four times a day, whenever someone asks me what I'm going to do after I graduate.

But this passage tells me that's not enough. It's not enough just to duck out and hide for a few years because you want a rest, some time off, because you just want an escape from stress and bother and people asking you what you're going to do, and then from people telling you what to do...it's not enough to want to just fade away and disappear.
You've got to do something with your life. That's what they say. And of course, they're right And as the passage says, what right do you have to just up and decide what you're going to do, without reference, save in lip service perhaps, to God? "You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."
Does that mean my life is irrelevant to God? No. It means that He is God, and I am me, and that this is the relationship now of Father and one of his sons. So how could I not consult God? How could I not bring eveything, every idea, every notion to Him and say 'Lord, this is where I am in my thinking, but how can I see things your way? How can I serve You?'

That's the challenge, but it's the challenge I believe God is constantly willing me to take.

Today was tiring, and in a way writing this was the last thing I wanted to do, if only because it's highlighted how far from God my thinking has become. But I don't think love is just about feeling, but a kind of certainty that provokes action. In a way, a lot of what the book of James talks about illustrates this, the problematic relationship of faith and deeds. Perhaps it should be redefined as 'love and deeds'. Look how much God loved, in Christ, so that you could be forgiven. Now may your love, which you may reflect back from His surpassing love (Paul prayed that the Ephesus church would "grasp how wide and long and deep is the love of Christ" and that they would know that it surpassed "all knowledge" Ephesians 3:18-19 and of course, that we may know this too) may cause you to act in a way that shows this.

Relying on God?
I've been thinking about the future, probably while I should have been doing something else, today. I probably have a tendency to excessively worry about the future and what it might hold, and I'm challenged by the fact that Jesus teaches his followers to do exactly the opposite (Matthew 6:25-34). I suppose I'm equally challenged by the assertion that Paul makes in Philippians 4:13 that he can "do anything through him who gives me strength", meaning not Paul himself, nor his friends or personal trainer, but Jesus. Also, as Jesus says in the gospel of John (John 15:5) "apart from me you can do nothing." There are of course many more instances of this principle of trusting fully in God in both the New and Old Testaments.
So how far does this principle rule in my life? More importantly, how much does Christ rule in my life? When I worry about the next few years, months, hours or minutes, how much is my thinking infused by my faith in the risen Christ? It's a question I have to ask myself, and I think it would be deeply hypocritical not to. If it is He upon whom my life is now based, rooted, then I am convicted that there shouldn't be massive glaring areas of my life that essentially have nothing to do with Him.

The Bible passage I quoted on Sunday is one that I think speaks on so many things; grace, mercy, the necessity of thinking for oneself rather than following any kind of 'tradition', whatever form that might take.

Last night while reading more of Mark 7 I was struck even more by how radical what Jesus says to the Greek speaking woman is.
Perhaps the first thing that struck me was based on something I had started to feel walking through Manchester city centre on a Sunday morning..essentiallly how Jesus drew people to him, people went to him who were sick, both physically and spiritually, the scripture from Matthew 8 springing to mind (Matthew 8:16-17)

Spent some time chatting to a man who sells the Big Issue in Manchester city centre today - he was a really gracious and bright guy and I enjoyed chatting to him about a few things. We talked about the magazine, the problems that he's seen with aggressive sellers and people using it essentially to beg, and we spoke of faith in God. He remembered a time he'd been praying in a church in Manchester, thinking to himself that he really needed some new clothes, and a complete stranger had approached him shortly after with a bag of designer stuff that he said he didn't need and more, and promply gave to him.
It was a cool story, and another example of grace perhaps?

MARK 7:24-30
"Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house and not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. In fact, as soon as she heard about him a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an evil spirit came and fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.
"First let the children eat all they want," he told her, "for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."
"Yes, Lord," she replied, "but even the children under the table eat the children's crumbs."
Then he told her, "For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter."
She went home and found he child lying on the bed, and the demon gone."