Christmas Presents, Apple Trees, and Big Octopuses

It’s Christmas Eve. Over the last few days Christmas presents have been ‘appearing’ around our Christmas tree. There have been family phone calls to finalise arrangements. Rachel’s completed her food shopping. We expect our family Christmas to happen as it has for many years.

About a month ago I decided that I would prune our big old apple tree. I’ve done it before. It takes a while, but that’s OK. I started work on it. It took longer than I expected. I’ve had to get ladders out. Growth and foliage have been hiding a rotten fence panel. What I expected to be a straightforward job has become unexpectedly more complicated.

For many years fishermen off the south coast of England have made their living catching shellfish – crabs, lobsters, whelks. This year fishermen from Devon and Cornwall have caught vast quantities of octopuses. Not only were there more of them than usual, they were a bigger species, usually found in the Mediterranean. It’s because the water is warmer. Octopus eat shellfish – so with more octopuses there have been less shellfish. The unexpected has interrupted their expected.

In the last week I’ve been with friends whose Christmas won’t be as they expected… a close family member admitted to a care home or hospital… a breakdown in family relationships… a bereavement… an unexpected change in financial situation or employment. The unexpected has interrupted the expected they might have wished for.

Musing on…

…My expectations of the comfortable and expected.

…The Christmas story …Joseph’s expectation of a traditional wedding …Mary’s expectation of a home birth with family around her …shepherds expecting a quiet life …wise men expecting to find a king …the expected interrupted by the unexpected …uncomfortable events that weren’t fully understood. But God was still present. God had a purpose in it all.

…The reality of the unexpected, uncomfortable and really difficult… and a God who is still present and purposeful when life’s expectations are inconveniently and sometimes painfully interrupted by events we don’t understand.