Jesus’ disciples experienced a transforming surprise. They became aware of being loved. That encounter opened their eyes …  and they ran to tell others about it!

This awareness was triggered in a variety of ways. It might have been what he said to them. Or it could have been what he did for them. No matter how the disciples experienced it, their encounter with Jesus transformed them.

Not recognizing our encounters

I suspect most of us at some point have wished that we could have that kind of encounter with Jesus. Yet we sometimes fool ourselves. We think we would have immediately recognized him or been moved by his words.

We fail to realize that we often are like the innkeeper at Bethlehem, like Jesus’ neighbors as he was growing up, or like the pious people who could not imagine anything good coming out of Bethlehem.

How many people did not recognize him and therefore were not transformed in meeting him? When I have placed myself in their shoes, I must ask myself whether I would have reacted differently.

The Jesus they encountered was not the Jesus they expected. So, seeing, they did not see, and hearing, they did not hear. Their expectations rendered them deaf and blind. So I wonder… do my expectations of how I can encounter Jesus get in the way of my recognizing him today?

God has a history of surprising people

Yet, from the very beginning of scripture, we see God surprising people. Think of the variety of situations in which people encountered God.

• Walking in a garden
• Seeing a burning bush
• A still small voice in the middle of the night
• Mending their nets after a day’s work
• Climbing a tree to get a better view of some commotion
• A banquet in a rich person’s house
• An annual holiday meal
• Walking along the road to Emmaus… or Damascus
• Walking along a beach seeing someone cooking

The list is almost endless. When I think of the variety of encounters with God, I realize that their experience of God was in the midst of their ordinary activity.

Vincentians surprised by God

Then I think of St. Vincent and how he began to see God in the struggling people in the countryside and then later in the villages and cities of France.

He began to read the scripture with new eyes, not as edifying stories about the past but seeing the parallels right before his eyes. Reading the scripture through the lens of his daily experience Vincent began to see the many ways Christ was calling him to continue the mission of bringing the good news of salvation. His experience of the suffering Christ of his day transformed him.

Years later, Frederic Ozanam heard God speaking in a most unlikely source, an atheist who challenged him asking what Christians were doing for the poor and suffering of his day.  With Sr. Rosalie Rendu’s help, that question led him on the path of discovering the face of God in the poor.

Sr. Rosalie Rendu herself had discovered that she never prayed as well as when she walked the streets of a Paris slum.

The point… God does not come to us in the way we want God to come. God comes to us in the ordinariness of our daily lives… if we open our eyes to see and hear, especially the cries of the poor… we will see God.

Expecting God’s Surprises

• Have I unconsciously expected to meet Jesus on my terms?
• Do I look for Jesus especially in places I don’t expect to see him?

Originally posted on Vincentian Mindwalk