019 - When Things Aren't What You Expected

I think most of us can agree that this entire year has been unlike anything we could have expected.

There have been so many moments this year when I have found myself wondering what in the world God is doing. And every time I have tried to anticipate what will come next, I’ve been completely wrong in my predictions.

As I’ve been reading the Christmas story this year, I’ve been struck by how unexpected and even ludicrous the events must have felt to those watching the birth of Jesus unfold. See, we often read about the birth of Jesus with wonder and awe, thinking it was completely perfect, exactly the way that it was supposed to be.

The thing is, to everyone involved, the birth of the Savior was completely unlike anything they expected. When God promised a Messiah would come to save His chosen people, the people thought that God meant the Messiah would save them from the oppression they had been facing since their covenant with God began. They expected a royal king, a strong warrior to lead the revolt against their captors and bring the freedom God had promised them in the very beginning (Genesis 17:4-8).

Imagine the confusion and disbelief, then, that the people involved in Jesus’ birth must have felt when God told them that this baby – born in a stable in the middle of the night with no celebration or fanfare – would be the Messiah they had long been awaiting. How many times as Jesus was growing up must Mary have wondered how her little boy would save an entire nation. How many times Joseph must have looked at his adopted son and wondered when he would overthrow the government. Did the shepherds wonder, as they gazed at that newborn’s face, if they had traveled all that way to see him for nothing?

I think if I were there, I would have wondered if God had gotten it wrong; if He had made a mistake in planning for this small child to overcome the hopelessness that weighed heavily on the Jewish people. How could this be God’s plan?

Many of us have asked God that very question. When the circumstances of life are different from what we imagined, it is our human nature that makes us wonder if God got it right. But if there’s one thing the Christmas story teaches us, it’s that God usually works in ways that don’t make any sense to us.

Because we know from the rest of the story that even though Jesus’ birth wasn’t at all what anyone had expected the birth of their Savior to be like, it was exactly right and set the stage for something amazing to happen, something much bigger and more eternally profound than a simple revolt against Rome.

God’s people expected salvation from governmental dictatorship; Jesus brought salvation from sin. They expected freedom from oppression; Jesus brought freedom from death. And they expected the Messiah to bring peace and hope in their religion, but Jesus did something even more amazing: He brought them peace and hope in their relationship with God.

I don’t know about you, but when I think about it that way, I’m really glad that God doesn’t work in the ways that I think He should, that He doesn’t fit into the very small box that I try so often to put Him in. If He did – if He only met my expectations instead of far surpassing them – I wouldn’t have the abundant life that He deeply desires for me to have (John 10:10). By working in ways beyond what I can even imagine, God reminds me that He alone is God, and when He turns my desperate circumstances into a life even more full than I could have produced on my own, I can’t help but submit every other aspect of my life to Him, as well.

There truly is something astounding about the Christmas story. But it’s not the silent night or the angels singing that makes me pause to consider the awe of that night. It’s the idea that God stepped into the world in the most unexpected and yet perfectly right way, and it changed everything for the people He loved.

What’s even more amazing is that He didn’t stop there. God wants to step into every aspect of our lives, and He won’t be confined to the box we place Him in or settle for merely meeting our expectations. And when we don’t understand what He’s doing and we wonder if He made a mistake, we can find peace and hope in knowing that God will not let us down, and that He will turn whatever we’re facing into something good, exactly the way that it is supposed to be.

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Published in the 019 - December 22 issue of TuesdayTribe

Written by Hannah Hladek