In was the day of my ordination. I was in the depths of Rochester Cathedral when a man walked up to me and just looked at me.

It was one of those moments you see in films when everything is out of focus but suddenly snaps into clarity.

It was my brother! He had come, out of the blue, from Guernsey.

It was so unexpected that I didn’t recognise him, but when I did it was very special.

Over 2000 years ago something unexpected happened. God turned up in the shape of a tiny baby. Not in the mighty temple but in a cowshed in a nearby town.

It was all so unexpected that only a few recognised that it was indeed God who had turned up - his parents, a few lowly shepherds and some exalted star gazers, but they had been told and, crucially, had let that truth come into focus.

Over the centuries, people looked back through the Scriptures and realised it wasn’t unexpected at all.

The readings we hear in carol services today would have been an exciting discovery to those early disciples as they read of a ‘virgin having a son who will be called Emmanuel - God with us’ (Isaiah 7:14), of a ‘child being born ... who will be called Mighty God’ (Isaiah 9:6), of the ‘Messiah coming from Bethlehem’ (Micah 5:2).

As we celebrate God’s millennia long plan being fulfilled in Jesus, let Him ‘turn up’ in our lives in full focus.

Ray de Vial

St Thomas Kendal