One… What to buy to surprise your child?  What to purchase to surprise your spouse?  What to wrap to surprise your parents?  We shop and plan and bake and wrap.  Searching for that perfect gift that our friend both wants and will be surprised to receive, we hunt through malls, pore through catalogues, and listen carefully for dropped hints.

Two… We want to be surprised ourselves by the Christmas spirit.  We wait all through Advent.  We attend church every Sunday to see the next purple candle lit on the Advent wreath.  We listen to Christmas carols, watch It’s a Wonderful Life, wander outside in the first snowfall.  Maybe it happen when the candles are lit in a darkened church sanctuary on Christmas Eve.  Maybe it will be the look of sheer joy on a child’s face when Santa leaves a stocking full of gifts.  Maybe it will be the buttery sweet taste of Grandma’s traditional Christmas cookies.  So we look for it, we listen for it, we hope to be touched again this year with Christmas magic.

Three… God delights in surprising you.  All along, God has been present.  It’s true, you can take a breath.  It is well with your soul.  Of course you won’t get everything done — your list is so much longer and more complicated than God’s expectations of you.  Today it will happen.  You will be grasped with joy.  You will sense the fullness of Christ’s love.  You will be infused with the serenity of the Holy Spirit.

Surprise!  While we await the birth of the Christ child – he is already here, in your heart, in your life, in your presence.