the surprising God

Lewis tells us about God breaking our expectations today in A Year with C.S. Lewis.

One of the worst things you can say about a movie is that it's predictable. We don't want to be able to guess what every line is going to be, or what the plot is going to do. True creativity surprises us. That's actually what humor IS. It's a surprise. It's something we don't expect, and the delight we experience at that moment of surprise produces laughter.

And so it is with God. He is not just creative... He is creativity itself. So He continually delights us. He surprises us. He amuses us. Robert Barron begins one of his best books with the statement that Christianity is, in its essence, a great joke. It's the delightful surprise that we get from the monumentally unexpected: God being born as a baby. God dying. God rising from the dead, and bringing us the ability to do the same. It's the greatest joke ever told. Not because it's not true.

But because it is.

Ask Him to surprise you. Even when you're expecting it... you won't expect what He does. He's the best at doing what we would never guess in a million years. He's been doing it for longer than that.

Thank You, God, for surprising us.