Unexpected: A Series of Stories

Prologue

The birth of Jesus is surrounded with the supernatural-and rightly so!  It had to be—there was no natural way out of this disastrous situation in which mankind had plummeted.

The stage had finally been set—and history was pregnant with anticipation of the Messiah. The world longed for his birth then, as much as we long for his return today.

Gordon Rupp (Methodist preacher and scholar): in 1951 noting the parallels in biblical culture that anticipated the Messiah and the world today (in 1951)  that looks forward to his return, notes that we live in...

“a world that becomes too complicated too fast; a world in which the “little people” feel like they are the playthings of great historical forces; a failure of nerve, a revival of superstition and religion, on the one hand, and on the other, a growing sense of fatalism and reckless gambling upon wild chance. To these must be added all the strains and stresses of present advances in warfare, the great systems of power, the huge number of people, the immense quantities of material, the catastrophic facts that statesmen, economists, and politicians cannot even understand, much less control, so that things still go “bump in the night at an ever more frightening crescendo.”

Moreover, most of us are consciously aware of our own depravity. We hear the conversations in our head that reveal the true attitude of our hearts; we know the thoughts of murder, adultery, thievery, and falsehood that, though perhaps not acted upon, are at least an option in our minds.

The "fruit" of global technology is that we are increasingly aware of the horrors around the world—prostitution, slavery, oppression, poverty, war, and powerlessness.

We need rescuing. We need hope.

It sounds like a fairy tale but it is not! 

Fairy tales find their story line in reality—but the advent is no fantasy, it is the real thing—the Messiah is coming—the time is now.

It had been 400 years and the Lord had been silent—not a prophet had spoken and not an angel had been sent with a message.  And then…