There's something about expecting something and not getting it. Or getting it in a way that is not quite the way you expect. Or even when you get something unexpected. I have a really hard time with all of the above - but especially the latter. I just don't know what to do, and am often flustered enough that I can't react well. This is why my husband has been told quite clearly that there will be NO SURPRISE PARTIES. I really don't like surprises.
Sometimes God surprises me, too. Okay, maybe more than sometimes. I get an idea in my head what God is like, and it seems like just when I've got God all figured out, God must get a little impish grin - much like my son does when he's figured out a loophole in one of the rules - and God throws me a curve ball. And again, I usually don't like it.
Debates that have clashed in the Christian church for a millenia (or more) are one of these areas in which I see God doing surprising things. Take the predestination vs. free will debate. If you are not familiar with it, it goes like this:
Side One (Predestination):
Your salvation is based fully upon God's grace - there is absolutely nothing you can do to change it. So, either you are "predestined" to salvation, or not. There is no personal choice in the matter - just God's choice. (Double presdestinarians would say you are either predestined to salvation or predestined to eternal damnation.)
Side Two (Free Will):
God's grace is offered to everyone, but you must accept it in order to receive salvation. Each individual has the ability to choose whether they will accept God's grace, or refuse it.
I tend toward believing the latter - somewhat because that is the faith tradition in which I was raised, but mostly because I have a hard time believing that God would intentionally leave someone out. It's much easier to say that God offered, but people have refused. But there is also enough of the former in me (and sufficient Biblical evidence to support either theory), to believe that I've been uniquely chosen. Maybe that's ego-centricity. LOL.
But I am convinced that the truth is somehow both-and. We are both uniquely chosen, and have the free will to accept it. I believe that God's grace IS freely offered to everyone, and that some will accept it and some will not. But even more fundamental is my understanding that God is bigger than our doctrinal debates, and just because I want a finite answer to questions such as these, God's character is such that the answer is infinite.
But still, God surprises me. When I am reading a Hindu text and sense God's spirit moving through it - that's surprising. When I am talking with Muslim women about their faith and can see God's hand in their religious decisions - that's surprising. I struggle with the thought that friends who are atheist (or, worse in some ways, agnostic) will potentially not get to spend eternity with me. But then I feel comforted that God has "ways" that are unknown to me - and that God will be consistent with God's character (love and justice would be the primary characteristics at play here) when the time comes (aka "Judgment Day"). Does that release me from feeling that sense of urgency to tell those friends about Jesus? Not at all - God's justice is nothing to trifle with. But it also frees me from feeling responsible for "converting" my friends - I know I can't do it anyway, it has to be that irresistible call of the Spirit (hmm... "irresistible" - sounds predestinarian) that changes lives. And I know for a fact that God loves each and every one of us with a depth and breadth that is incomprehensible to me.
I look forward to that surprise - that day I get to heaven and see how God has worked all of this out. There may be a bit of the older brother in the Prodigal Son story in me - "but God... REALLY??? Whatever did HE do to get here??? I've been your servant all along and he gets the fatted calf?!?!?" But I hope that I will be too pleased with seeing how God has surprised us all, to get grouchy about it.
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