This is also a season for making plans. There are parties to prepare, family visits to schedule, and all the the business and busy-ness of Christmas and New Year’s. Now, as we begin a new calendar year, it is only natural to consider what might happen in the year to come, and to try to plan accordingly.
But because this is winter and we live in Minnesota (as I am learning), sometimes these two elements (plans and surprises) work together. Our plans are interrupted. Sometimes there is a snow storm, and we have to try to reschedule the Christmas program (again). Sometimes the storms are less literal, but just as real—a death in the family (either recent or remembered), or even just a little touch of a cold that keeps us from enjoying the holidays as fully as we had hoped.
In the midst of all that, in both the celebrations and the chaos, this is also the season when we remember that God often works in surprising ways. God often interrupts our plans and surprises our expectations. So instead of a mighty king, God comes to us as a tiny, vulnerable baby. Instead of a palace, he is born in a stable. His parents are nobody important, and his first visitors are poor, disreputable shepherds.
But the biggest surprises are yet to come. No, not the wise men, although their visit is surprising, since it demonstrates that this child is for everyone, even foreigners (even us).
The biggest surprise of this season, and of every season, is that God becomes human for us—and this will lead, surprise of surprises, to the cross, where the same Jesus Christ who was born in Bethlehem will die for our sake. And from the cross comes yet another surprise: the empty tomb!
This greatest of all surprises interrupts our plans just as surely as winter’s first big snow storm. Everything is changed. Glory to God in the highest heaven!
May God's love and peace be with you—and a Merry Christmas and Blessed Epiphany, too!
~Pastor Sarah
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