Yesterday it was Joseph.  Today it is John the Baptist.  God, being all-powerful,  could have zapped us from above, in an instant, to save us. But God didn't. Just as well, as I'm not too sure we would have been convinced by it. Instead, God comes to us gradually, through people, to whom a revelation is given, bit by bit, over time. The gradual revelation of God to the people of Israel recounted in the Jewish Bible that we call the Old Testament now reaches its climax in persons of Joseph and now John.

Unexpectedness is the order of the day. Just as neither Joseph nor Mary expected the things that would happen to them, so too the parents of John the Baptist, Elizabeth and Zechariah. The miracle of John's birth to a woman well beyond child-bearing age foreshadows the miracle of Jesus' birth to a virgin. John's unexpected birth gets the whole town talking, especially when it coincides with Zechariah's recovery of speech after having been rendered speechless by the whole business of his wife's surprising pregnancy.

John's extraordinary birth tells us to be prepared for the unexpected. God is a God of Surprises, as Pope Francis is fond of saying.  We like to be in control of our lives; but it is when we ease up and open our hearts to the unpredictability of God that things will begin to happen for us. God came to Joseph in a dream, precisely at a moment when he was least in control. Similarly, God wants to come to us when we least expect it. Allow God to surprise you this Christmas.

A meditation written Fr Paul Graham O.S.A., Assistant General on the Augustinian Council for Northern Europe, including the Provinces of Ireland, England & Scotland, Poland, Germany, Austria and Slovakia

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