Expecting the Surprise

Cultivating Calling and Pilgrimage is a meandering column documenting the pilgrimage of faith. It’s an occasional letter arriving in the mail from that shabby, wandering uncle you only see a few times year, describing the odd bits and bobs of books, songs, stories, people and places that have struck his fancy, put a lump in his throat, or kept him putting one foot in front of the other toward the Face of Jesus, that Joy set before us all.

Here I sit in my friends’ living room in Northfield, Massachusetts. Peeking out from the mantle just above a lion figurine is a linocut print of C.S. Lewis, and beside that, a gilded illustration of the Dawn Treader cresting the Narnian breakers on its way to the utter East and Aslan’s country. The temperature dropped somewhat sharply last night and Mary, Scott, and I will be bundling up a little more than yesterday before we head out the door. A few white flakes even drifted past the breakfast window this morning whilst we nibbled on bacon, eggs, and toast, with mugs of hot tea and coffee in hand. 

Now, Mary and Scott are tending to chores here and there. I’m writing this to you while the swaying sing-song of a wind chime, somewhere outside this room where I sit beneath lamplight, wanders through the air, the walls, my own heart and mind. Yellow-leafed trees glitter in the chill breeze.

Yesterday evening was the first time I’d ever set foot in this home, though the invitation to make the trip here was given a few years ago. It’s just a long way from Mississippi, and my tour routes haven’t stretched to the New England area until now. Last night after dinner, as the conversation made its way from the kitchen to comfortable living room chairs, we shared stories. Stories about the surprises of God’s grace all along the way. 

It may sound strange to say that I’ve come to expect to be surprised. It’s a bit of a contradiction, I know, but it’s true that after having landed in so many tangles over the years, only to find Jesus somehow able to take those snarled yarns and weave some fitting garment from them again and again, it’s not that I know how things will work out, just that I’m learning to expect them to in some way I can’t imagine. God is All-Wise. You cannot stump Him. I’ve come to believe that, any ridiculous mess we allow Him into, He’ll work out some life-giving thing. There are places I’m still longing for it to happen, but I have seen it happen in many places. 

I could tell you about specific instances. Like the time an unexpected bill came in the mail. One I had no way of paying. I told no one but the Lord about it. The next day, two separate checks from two people who didn’t know each other, or anything about my situation, arrived, covering the bill almost to the dollar. In some ways the surprises that meet practical needs like bills or van breakdowns are the most fun to talk about. The relational instances are usually slower and harder to express. 

Last night I was recounting something I wrote about in the introduction to my book Only the Lover Sings. It was the story of a surprise I never could’ve expected. After a short, difficult marriage I plunged into several years of consuming sadness and confusion. All the ways in which I had come to understand myself were blown to bits. My imagination for any good thing from that point forward in my life was totally burnt out; I felt like my face was pressed up against a wall of black. How could God do anything with this tangled mess? Or the real question: why would He at this point? Could He even stand to be in my presence? 

Then the big surprise. 

After about two years of being stuck in that bitter darkness, something astonishing took place. I struggle to even put it into words, because it didn’t happen in words; it just happened. The closest thing to a vision I’ve ever had. Maybe I can just say that Jesus made Himself as actually and tangibly present as He could in the most gentle and tender way. I can still see His body posture as He sat on the hearth across from the chair where I was losing my mind, having already lost my heart, so far as I could tell. 

I’m not trying to be spooky. In fact, the experience wasn’t spooky at all. I was suddenly, calmly aware that Jesus was in the room. I was terrified—not in that moment of Jesus—but of what my life had become, and the first thing that became clear to me was that Jesus was not terrified. Everything about Him was relaxed, peaceful. Did I hear an audible voice? I’m not really sure, honestly. Whether I did or not, I got the message: “Everything has changed for you, but for Me, nothing has changed. I’m not afraid of you or what your life has become. Take all the time you need. I’m not going anywhere.” 

Where I had expected disgust, condemnation, or abandonment, I was met instead by a gracious surprise. Jesus made it quietly clear that He was glad to be with me, and that though I was still in for a long haul in terms of grieving and healing from the trauma, that “wall of black” that had absorbed any and all light of hope began, at that moment, to dissolve. 

Talking with my friends last night here in Northfield, we found ourselves laughing in wonder as these kinds of stories piled up between us. I’m not the only one with these sorts of tales to tell. It’s one of my favorite things about traveling around the country as a singer/songwriter; I cross paths with all kinds of folks who bear witness to the consistency of God’s unexpected grace. And that’s where the gracious surprise becomes a reliable substrate. If this is just what the Lord is like, then we can expect and even rely upon Him to come up with good possibilities in the very places where we’ve lost any ability to detect any hopeful prospects. 

Isn’t that the Cross? Isn’t that the tomb of Christ? The Bible is packed with stories of places like these. Places of obvious impossibility. Places where hope goes to die, to rot. Places where the whole world—where life itself—seems to have its face slammed up against a wall of black, until the wall dissolves and Jesus appears, in the flesh, on the other side of a bolted door. And isn’t that then a fundamental pattern at the core of our faith? Anything is possible with God.

A few days ago, I was camping at Taconic State Park in New York State, and I took a short hike out to a waterfall. It was a chilly day, but the walk warmed me up as the hike wound wonderfully alongside a strikingly clear stream flowing down from the falls up ahead. Bright yellow leaves fluttered all about, and the scent of the spruce forest made the air sing with sweetness. I plucked a few sprigs and crushed them in my palm, lifting them to my face, breathing them in. 

When I got to the falls, I sat on some rocks for a long while watching what began as a trickling spring in Mount Washington rush and tumble musically down two hundred feet of rockface. I remembered how C.S. Lewis wrote about the beauty and sublimity of waterfalls in his book The Abolition of Man. Two men may stand before the same natural glory, and the first will say it is a truly sublime thing, while the second will say the sense of sublimity is merely imposed upon the waterfall by humans—that there is no such thing as transcendent beauty or meaning.  

I couldn’t help but think, surrounded by all that tumbling, surging outpour of beauty: “What kind of person makes this kind of thing?” Omnipotence (all-powerful), omnipresence (all-present), and omniscience (all-knowing) were ancient Greek philosophical categories later adapted by Christianity. But they’re words that describe capabilities, not character. They describe what someone can do, not what that someone is actually like. Obviously, someone who could make the waterfall I was enjoying would have to be all-powerful. No surprise there. Yet the more I thought about it, I felt they’d have to be so much more than just powerful. They’d need to be beautiful—that’s the surprise.  

Like the leper who knew Jesus could heal him, but wasn’t sure whether the Lord was the kind of person who would, we are all in for a world of surprise. For that man, there was no question whether Jesus had the power. He longs to know, is Jesus kind? Is He good? Even beautiful? Yes. Yes. Yes. “If I am willing, leper? Oh, you have no idea!”

My pastor back home once said that the Christian life is a long series of opportunities to discover again and again how durable the love of God really is. To taste the first few refreshing drops from the mountain spring in the early stages of getting to know Jesus is exciting. As the stream makes its way from the heights, it encounters endless boulders, somehow finding its way around; it crawls through caves, whirls around the roots of trees. More streams are gathered into it as it travels and the hopeful flow swells with the witness and report of persistent grace. A thousand surprises spill into the stream till it grows strong and joyful enough to leap from rock to rock, laughing its way down from the precipice. Somehow all the hardness that breaks the water to bits only serves to set it singing along the cliffs, rainbows in its spray, where it will pool again and go cantering along. 

These stories we tell on these cold nights together in the living room under lamplight. These tunes we hum together even as the winter sets in. Together we remember the things the Lord has done for us—the many times Jesus has embraced flinching, astonished lepers like us. These many beauties that cascade across our days sing to us more of the surprise of what God is like than just what He can do. Let the redeemed of the Lord come and tell their stories, sing their songs, waken each other once again to His beauty. Rejoicing together if that’s where we are, weeping together if that is where we are. But whether rejoicing or weeping, expecting to be surprised by the inexhaustible and enduring love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The featured image, “Mountain Winter,” is courtesy of Steve Moon and used with his kind permission for Cultivating.

Matthew Clark

Matthew Clark is a singer/songwriter and storyteller from Mississippi. He has recorded several full length albums, including Matthew’s latest project, “The Well Trilogy,” 3 full-length album/book combos released over three years. Each installment—Only the Lover Sings, A Tale of Two Trees, and Where the River Goes—is made up of 11 songs and a companion book of 13 essays written by a variety of contributors exploring themes around encountering Jesus, faith-keeping, and the return of Christ. You can find the books on Amazon and the albums on Spotify and Apple Music.

A founding member of The Maker’s Project and a columnist for Cultivating, Matthew’s essays reflect on faith-keeping and pilgrimage. Matthew travels as a touring musician and speaker sharing songs and stories in a van called Vandalf.

www.matthewclark.net/