Who God Notices

I was reading Acts 10 with my small group last night and we got to talking about Cornelius. He was a Roman centurian, so by the social order of the day he would not normally be in with the Jewish folk...you know, God's people. The Jews, being the keepers of true religion as it were, would have assumed that Cornelius wasn't on God's "A" list and would have been on the outside looking in. But God was paying attention to Cornelius. It said that his prayers and gifts to the poor had come up as an offering to God. The things that he did before he was "in" mattered. Maybe the Jews had missed a little bit about true religion. Maybe we have, too. Mabye we would do well to think about who God notices and do a little affirming of those who we would normally classify as "outside."