I’m not the most enthusiastic of shoppers when it comes to buying clothes, but there are times when I acknowledge I should replenish my jaded wardrobe. And so, a few weeks ago, I plucked up my courage and went out with my wife to buy some jeans. The children are coming home for Christmas, and I agreed it was the least I could do to ‘keep up appearances’.

As we stood waiting to pay, I noticed the pleasant young lady across the counter was placing a new shirt in the bag too and so I pointed out that it must belong to another customer. To my immense surprise I found that my wife had quietly decided to buy that for me too!

But my experience doesn’t even begin to compare with the shock Mary had when the angel Gabriel turned up and informed her she was going to have a baby! She was a virgin and had had no sexual relationships with any man, not even her prospective husband Joseph. In fact, the word inconceivable seems far more appropriate than surprise. But as history testifies the ‘inconceivable’ did take place and Jesus was born some nine months later.

As we prepare to celebrate the Christmas story again, I can’t help thinking that we need to remember that God has an extraordinary, indeed a glorious predictable ability, to surprise us. Put simply, the word ‘impossible’ isn’t in His dictionary.

Take my conversion to the Christian faith. That came as a shock to a lot of people, not least to me. My conviction that I should become a Baptist Pastor stunned everyone who knew me too especially my family. But why should we be surprised when things like this happen? If God can fix a virgin birth He can do anything.

One particular story comes to mind. It relates to the mid 1990’s when the former Yugoslavia was being ripped apart in a bitter civil war. I was a member of a team that had become convinced that God wanted us to take humanitarian aid to the tens of thousands of refugees who were casualties of that bitter internecine conflict.

I can still recall the day our team leader received a telephone call from our friends in what is now Croatia informing us that the local soap factory had been bombed and they were desperate for supplies. He promised them we would try to help and to his utter astonishment the moment he put the phone down it rang again. It was one of our team asking if we could use any soap because he had access to 100,000 bars. It was of excellent quality but it had been rejected by a major retailer because it was the wrong colour pink.

He responded immediately and said we could take it even it if was black! It didn’t end there because a local transport company provided us with a lorry and a warrant to cover the cost of the transport from Wales to Croatia.

As we celebrate Christmas again let’s take note of the fact that the ‘God of miracles’ is no figment of our imagination, and He is at work as much today as He was when Jesus was conceived. So, what about you? Are you willing to trust the God who can do the inconceivable?