The God of Surprises
Thought for the Day
19th December 2025
Good morning. Like many people I keep an address list on my computer and at this time of year bring it up on screen with a view to sending Christmas cards. Then my eye focuses on the name of a dear friend who has died in the year and my finger hovers over the delete button. To press it seems like another death. At Christmas many people are conscious of those who are not with them, which is why it can be a such a poignant and isolating time for some. On Christmas Eve Radio 4 will be broadcasting the Festival of nine lessons and carols from King’s College, Cambridge. In the introduction to that service the congregation are reminded that they worship together with those who rejoice with them on another shore and a greater light. It’s a lovely phrase and a wonderful belief, which I share, but I know how difficult it is for so many, even church people, to believe. In relation to that difficulty I also love some words of the 19th century American poet, Emily Dickinson, who said about the next life:
I believe we shall be in some manner cherished by our Maker-that the one who gave us this remarkable earth has the power still further to surprise that which he caused. Beyond that all is silence.”
The power still further to surprise us.
When presents are opened on Christmas day its always fun if there are a few nice surprises. A child who is expecting a fairly small present suddenly discovers they have been given a new bicycle, a mother is given her favourite perfume which earlier she had decided she could not afford to buy for herself.
For Christians, God is a God of surprises. First in the very fact that we exist at all, what Emily Dickinson called ‘this remarkable earth’ so that when we wake up in the morning we wake to the gift of a new day. Then, of course, at Christmas time, the extraordinary disclosure of Divine life in a human story, beginning with the vulnerability of a babe in homeless family. All through the Hebrew Scriptures there is a longing that God’s kingdom might come on earth, that the devout poor who lose out in the world as it is, might be vindicated, and it is natural to picture this in terms of power and glory. But what was revealed at Christmas was simply a human life in a loving family. God searching us out to the extent of becoming one with our humanity. Changing the world from within it. A total surprise that transformed the way those first followers of Jesus understood the world and one which still astounds believers today.