IF YOU were told: “You will find your long-awaited bringer of peace and justice, newly born and lying in a straw-lined cow’s drinking trough under a rough shelter in a small city,” you would be surprised, to say the least. Yet that is one picture of Christmas and it shows how God catches us unawares.

A little boy opened his bedroom curtains to see the storm outside with flashes of lightning. “I thought God wanted to take pictures of me,” he said to his mother. Naive? That child’s wonder and natural ability to see God all around is to be coveted. A young girl was seen holding an umbrella up on a sunny day. When asked why, she said she knew people had been praying for rain for days and was prepared for it. When we deal with God we must learn to expect the unexpected.

Children often show us where and how to find God. “Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” said Jesus.

The Virgin Mary was a teenager when chosen to carry the world’s most precious gift. She was both an example of humility and sign of God’s humility. The 17th-century bishop and writer Jeremy Taylor wrote: “When the eternal God meant to stoop so low as to be fixed in our centre, he chose for his mother a holy person and a maid.” The reformer Calvin also spoke of God “stooping” to meet us: “Let us be content to take the Son of God as our Master, especially as he vouchsafes to stoop so low as to take that charge upon him.”

People who are searching for God may be looking in the wrong places. The Bible is the story of God’s love affair, seeking out his recalcitrant human creation, rather than the other way round. When He overtakes us, we are likely to be surprised.

In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis wrote of the way his personal belief progressed from atheism through theism and then unexpectedly to Christianity, for which he was to become one of the 20th century’s leading apologists. “To accept the incarnation was another step in the same direction. It brings God nearer, or near in a new way. And this, I found, was something I had not wanted . . . I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was being driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo, I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion . . . It was more like when a man, after long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake.”

Something had been given to that man of great intellect, the precious gift of faith, which he could not have acquired by himself. How to acquire it? The 17th-century poet George Herbert likens us to God’s tenant in Redemption: hopelessly behind with the rent, the tenant goes in search of the Landlord to plead for remission and the use of a lesser property:

They told me there, that he was lately gone

About some land, which he had dearly bought

Long since on earth, to take possession.

I straight return’d, and knowing his great birth,

Sought him accordingly in great resorts

In cities, theatres, gardens, parks, and courts

At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth

Of theeves and murderers: there I him espied,

Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died

The Cross of Christ overshadowed the manger in which He was born. His birth was a sacrifice and His death was a sacrifice. Both were unexpected. Both demonstrate the cost of God’s love.

Bishop John Jewel, in a sermon preached in Salisbury Cathedral in 1570, said: “What we celebrate and perceive in Holy Communion is the effects of the Cross.” That is, God working in a radically new way in signs and wonders. The broken bread is His broken body; the wine poured out is His life’s blood spent. God stoops to give us Himself under cover of bread and wine. So our Christmas celebrations include a memorial of His death as well as His birth — hence the name, “Christ’s-Mass”.

The prologue to the Gospel according to St John tells of near-universal unwillingness to allow God to meet us in this lowly way: “He was in the world and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” (John i. 12) Time and again Jesus chided the crowds who followed Him: “You have eyes yet cannot see, you have ears yet cannot hear.”

The Church of Nativity in Bethlehem is built above a cave which is believed to be the place where Jesus was born. It is an ancient building, now in poor condition. To reach the most sacred spot, you have to squeeze through a narrow entrance and stoop. Children find it easy. O come, let us bow down and worship. For we are made for adoration.

The Most Rev Dr John Sentamu is the Archbishop of York