Surprise

Bill Webb recently saw his 80 years of life flash before his eyes. It was through his seven grandchildren, who'd found old photos and, heartwarmingly, dressed up as him during different eras of his life—celebrating his birthday, his life, and their love for him.

His 21-year-old granddaughter, Kenzie Greene shared an Instagram post about the event. She said, “He definitely knows how to make all of us feel special and remembers things about each of us.” Kenzie recalls that their grandparents always showed up to their sports and other events to express their love and support.

After retiring, Bill has made the most of his life as a grandfather, spending countless nights playing games, sharing meals, and spending priceless time with them at the family house.

Kenzie and the family wanted to do something special for Pawpaw to show him how much he means to them. They decided to highlight eras from his life. Kenzie noted that “80 years is a long time,” and they had to fit all those years into 7 eras that each grandchild could personify.

For each era of their Pawpaw’s life, each grandchild chose an era that represented a connection they shared with him. For example, Kenzie’s cousin Hutton was really into football in high school, so he represented the “football era” of Bill’s life. Kenzie is currently studying at the University of Tennessee, where Bill also studied, so she naturally chose his “frat boy” era. As each grandchild came out, they announced what part of his life they represented, and then showed him an actual scrapbook picture of what he looked like at that stage of his life.

One commenter on her video wrote, “This speaks volumes about love, legacy, and the strength of family bonds. What a reminder of the beauty in honoring those who paved the road before us. This is the kind of legacy that inspires us all. What a family!”

When Jake and Kelly Levine boarded their flight, they were hoping their five-month-old daughter Romey would be able to behave appropriately. Kelly said, “Before the flight I was very anxious. You never know if the people around you are going to be bothered by a baby.” It was only Romey’s second flight; the family was returning to their home from a vacation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

According to Kelly, however, Romey was transfixed for the majority of the five-hour flight by the passenger sitting next to her who was crocheting a sweater. Kelly said, “Entranced is the perfect word. Romey is a very curious baby; she loves to just watch people and observe.”

Meegan Rubin was Romey’s seatmate, and enjoyed the attention from Romey. Rubin said, “She started staring at me so inquisitively.”

Once Rubin finished her sweater, she looked at the curious baby and she decided she had just enough time—and just enough yarn—to pivot to a new project: a beanie for the baby. She was hopeful she could pull it together in about an hour. “I just had to,” she said, adding that she makes an effort to surprise strangers with handmade gifts whenever she can.

A few minutes after the plane landed, Rubin turned to the couple, handed them a tiny cream-colored hat, and declared: “Okay, it’s done!”

“We were totally shocked, as were the other passengers around us,” said Kelly. “I was near tears.” Kelly placed the hat on Romey’s head, and it fit perfectly. Everyone in the vicinity smiled and applauded. She was so overwhelmed with joy that afterward she shared the video on TikTok, where it was viewed over seven million times.

Kelly said, “I will make sure Romey knows for the rest of her life that people can be nice to each other for no reason, and that this story inspired others to do so. She add that she and Rubin are staying in touch and hope to get together soon. “We want her to be a part of our life forever.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God also loves it when his people use their gifts to bless each other, especially innocent children.

"My husband Jerry was a ginormous presence. Such a happy guy," said his wife, Lori Belum. "He did everything for us. And he just loved Christmas."

The Belums were married in 2010 and had two sons, Benjamin and Sammy. Both boys love playing flag football and their dad loved supporting them even more. But the day after Thanksgiving, right after Benjamin scored the game-winning touchdown, an unbelievable tragedy occurred on the sidelines. Lori said, “Jerry just collapsed ... and that was it. A ruptured aortic dissection is what they called it and it's pretty much instant death."

In many ways, the Belums don't know how to move on. But they did know one way of honoring their beloved husband and father. The Belums took a trip to New York City to see Rockefeller Plaza, something they had planned to do with Jerry just a week prior to his death. And while they were away, neighbors got to work planning something special.

Neighbor Tracy Clancy said, “I think I labeled it 'Project Illumination' in the group chat.” The Belum's exterior Christmas decorations had already been unpacked. Jerry was planning to decorate the day he died. Then the neighbors huddled up to make sure his intentions came to light.

One neighbor said, “We wanted to do what Jerry had previously done to the house. But a little different because you know it can't be the exact same.” So, using a photograph of Jerry's decorations last year, the neighbors completed the house to near-perfection.

And upon returning home from New York, the Belums were shocked. "Who did it?" "Did Santa's helpers come by?" "They might have!" Those voices echoed from the backseat of the car in a video taken upon arrival. And the Belums now have a little more light to guide their way through life without Jerry.

Lori said, “We'll be together on Christmas and talk about him and get through it. It'll be hard, but we'll do it and we'll laugh and we'll cry and you know, we'll be okay. Right?”

It started in November with a single string of Christmas lights on a Baltimore County street. Kim Morton was home watching a movie with her daughter when she received a text from her neighbor who lives directly across the road. He told her to peek outside.

Matt Riggs had hung a string of white Christmas lights, stretching from his home to hers. He also left a tin of homemade cookies on her doorstep. The lights, he told her, were meant to reinforce that they were always connected.

Riggs said, “I was reaching out to Kim to literally brighten her world.” He knew his neighbor was facing a dark time. Morton had shared that she was dealing with depression and anxiety. She was also grieving the loss of a loved one and struggling with work-related stress. The mounting pressure led to panic attacks.

A bit of brightness was in order, he decided, but he certainly did not expect that his one strand of Christmas lights would somehow spark a neighborhood-wide movement. In the days that followed Riggs’ light-hanging gesture, neighbor after neighbor followed suit, stretching lines of Christmas lights from one side of the street to the other.

When Leabe Commisso, who lives on the other end of the block, saw what Riggs had done, she wanted in. She said, to her neighbor, “Let’s do it, too. Before we knew it, we were cleaning out Home Depot of all the lights.”

Quickly, other neighbors caught on. Kim said, “Little by little, the whole neighborhood started doing it. The lights were a physical sign of connection and love.”

She and Riggs were stunned to see neighbors with drills and ladders, up on their rooftops and tangled in trees, doing whatever they had to do to hang the lights. For the first time in a long time, a feeling of togetherness—and light—had returned.

Riggs said, “What blows my mind is that it was all organic. It just happened. There was no planning. It just grew out of everybody’s desire for beauty and joy and connection.”

But the impromptu effort has perhaps had the most profound impact on the person for whom it was originally intended. Kim said, “It made me look up, literally and figuratively, above all the things that were dragging me down. It was light pushing back the darkness.”

When Principal James Marsh arrived at Zela Elementary School in rural Summersville on a Monday morning, he had no reason for alarm. Everything looked normal and in working order. He greeted his teachers and stood out front to greet students as they arrived on buses.

When a custodian informed Marsh that he couldn’t unlock one of the dumpsters, he quickly went over to help. After unlocking the combination lock and lifting the metal bar restricting access, Marsh heard deep growling. After a moment, the dumpster lid lifted, and Marsh was staring into the eyes of a black bear. “If he’d have reached his paw out, he could have swiped me,” Marsh said.

In a sequence captured on security footage, the bear quickly bolted from the dumpster and ran off into the nearby wilderness as Marsh too ran in the opposite direction. After a brief moment to collect himself, Marsh was seen laughing. “Did you not hear anything?” he asked the custodian. Nope, he hadn’t seen or heard a thing. It wasn’t until they reviewed several hours of security footage that they uncovered evidence that the bear had previously gorged itself on food inside, then fallen asleep.

When he asked the students to name the bear (in case it ever returned), the students decided on “Jack.” “Because he came out of there like a jack-in-the-box.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Life is filled with surprises and sometimes sudden danger. We are not to worry about the future or live in dread, but put our trust in God. We should live confidently, recognizing that any moment may be our last on earth.

Writing for The Atlantic, David Merritt Johns says that a most confounding story appeared in his inbox by a tipster who prefaced it by saying, “I’m sorry, it cracks me up every time I think about this.”

Harvard doctoral research student Andres Korat found a curious result from a 2018 study: Among diabetics, eating half a cup of ice cream a day was associated with a lower risk of heart problems. After consulting with his department chair, Korat set out to debunk his initial finding with more research, but it ended up being stubbornly consistent.

Korat wrote in his findings, “There are few plausible biological explanations for these results.” But he also mentioned several prior studies that found similar results. Mark Pereira is an epidemiologist who authored one of those prior studies. He said, “I still to this day don’t have an answer for it.”

In his deep dive into the story, Johns claims that several medical researchers ended up spinning their data into conclusions more readily acceptable to mainstream audiences. Instead of touting the health benefits of ice cream, they pivoted to yogurt. One research paper read: “Higher intake of yogurt is associated with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes. Whereas other dairy foods and consumption of total dairy are not.”

“The conclusions weren’t exactly accurately written,” acknowledged Dariush Mozaffarian, who co-authored the paper. “Saying no foods were associated—ice cream was associated.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even with advances in medical knowledge and technology, the human body is complex and full of surprises. Only God understands it fully, and our best attempts are foolish compared to God's wisdom.

When a local man was carjacked at a Sunoco gas station recently, he probably had no idea the perpetrators would be caught and his car recovered so quickly.

The man had just finished pumping his gas and was entering his car when the two teens approached and demanded his keys. After the man yielded, the two teenagers were baffled by the car’s manual transmission. Unable to put the car in gear, they instead exited the vehicle and ran.

The two teenagers were arrested for the attempted car theft after police chased them on foot. They were charged with carjacking and conspiracy to carjack.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Those who disregard God’s standards for honesty and truth and try to lie, cheat, or steal their way to riches, will ultimately end in judgment, whether immediately or ultimately.

In William Shatner’s new book, Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder, the Star Trek actor reflects on his voyage into space on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space shuttle on Oct. 13, 2021. Then 90 years old, Shatner became the oldest living person to travel into space, but as the actor and author details below, he was surprised by his own reaction to the experience. He wrote:

My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral. It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness.

Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong. I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn't out there, it's down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.

It started as a mistake, but ended as a sizable donation. Julian Cannan still hasn’t gotten a straight answer for why so many Amazon packages were delivered to her home. Unlike the vast majority of such shipments, it did not start with her ordering them.

It started on June 5th. Cannan thought the first round of packages were somehow connected to her business. "I thought my business partner had ordered something for our studio that we were waiting for on backorder. So I opened them up to condense the boxes and I realized they were mask brackets."

Mask brackets are a newly-engineered device that’s supposed to make the wearing of a mask more comfortable by removing the direct contact of the mask from the face. Because the package had her address but not her name, she just figured it was an honest mistake and moved on.

But then they kept coming. And coming. Over one hundred packages of mask brackets arrived over a two-week period at her house, a pile that could’ve easily eclipsed her front door and portions of her windows.

After repeated contacts with Amazon, they confirmed that the seller was aware of the mistake and would stop, but they did not request any returns. Instead, Jill convinced them to ship the packages to a local hospital, where they could do the most good.

Cannan said, “I do own a DYI studio. We do a lot of kits for kids and adults and things like that. Having multiple children myself and having them had different hospital stays, I kind of wanted to come up with something creative that would break the monotony of them being in the hospital.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sometimes the things that look like random mistakes are actually opportunities for us to demonstrate kindness and generosity. We shouldn't be dishonest or fraudulent, but if God gives you an unexpected blessing that might be your cue to bless someone else instead.

An Indian bride called off her own wedding after getting a look at her groom for the first time on their wedding day. At a reception preceding the ceremony, the bride and groom both lifted their veils and saw one another for the first time. But the would-be bride didn’t like what she saw. According to local news reports, the woman complained the man was too dark-skinned and appeared to be too old. After the woman called off the wedding, the families that had arranged the marriage began fighting, stopping only when police were called to the scene.

Brooklyn police were unable to nab the perpetrator of an ongoing string of graffiti vandalism. They knew they had to get inside the mind of their elusive criminal. For several weeks, the tagger had been spray painting political slogans throughout an area subway station. This sparked a flood of complaints from transportation riders and officials alike.

So, they built a fake wall made of plywood, which was to serve as an obvious target for the prolific tagger, with a hidden door that officers could hide behind. Transit Chief Edward Delatorre instructed his officers to take turns hiding behind the wall, lying in wait for hours at a time.

Delatorre said, “Sure enough, a man came back and began spray painting [another opinionated statement]. So they caught him live, writing on a beam.” The suspect, 43-year-old Jamie Montemarano, was charged with criminal mischief.

Potential Preaching Angles: Even when it appears as though we've gotten away, judgment awaits those who continually flaunt God's laws. Often the thrill of breaking said laws is what hastens our own moment of judgment.

Nancy Crampton-Brophy, self-published romance novelist, had been married to Daniel Brophy, culinary chef, for more than 25 years. When her husband was killed in a shooting, it shattered their local community. But in a surprising twist, police arrested her for the murder.

The arrest of Nancy Crampton-Brophy for her husband’s murder sparked a renewed scrutiny of her previous works of fiction, many of which had storylines revolving around spousal murder.

One previous essay, published on the blog “See Jane Publish” but since been taken down, was called “How to Murder Your Husband.” And in a different post on the same blog, Crampton-Brophy wrote:

My husband and I are both on our second (and final—trust me!) marriage. We vowed, prior to saying ‘I do,’ that we would not end in divorce. We did not, I should note, rule out a tragic drive-by shooting or a suspicious accident.

Local law enforcement has been especially tight-lipped about the potential motive for the killing, saying they don’t want to jeopardize an ongoing investigation.

“It’s a big shock. It’s a big shock,” Daniel Brophy’s mother, Karen Brophy, said of her daughter-in-law’s arrest. “But we’re not making any statements.”

Potential Preaching Angles: Our thoughts and words are often precursors to action. If we want to live righteously, we must think, speak, and write with righteousness in mind.

When Hillary Harris learned the name of her next-door neighbor, it set off some mental alarm bells, and led to an unexpected family connection.

Having been raised in a loving adoptive family as a newborn, Harris has always been curious about her biological family, but that curiosity turned into necessity when she and her husband were expecting their first child. According to CBS News, Harris put in a request to unseal her adoption records in order to ascertain her family medical history.

"That had all my health history, it had a letter from my birth mother. … It also disclosed that my birth father Wayne had passed away in 2010," Harris said. "And then it had two half-sisters, Renee and Dawn … and then right here it says Dawn Johnson of Greenwood."

The following year, Harris and her husband Lance noticed they had new neighbors, and Lance went out to meet them.

"[Lance] comes in and is like, 'Yeah, I met the neighbor. Her name's Dawn.' … 'Dawn from Greenwood?' … Lance is like, 'Yeah.' I'm like, 'You don't get it?' He's like, 'What are you talking about?'" Harris recalled. "And I pulled out all my adoption paperwork. And I said, 'Dawn. Greenwood. Sister, you know?' And he's like, 'Oh my gosh.'"

Though 19 years apart, the two sisters have been busily catching up on lost time, ecstatic to have made such an unlikely connection. "That moment when I first embraced her in the driveway … I mean, it was amazing. It was a miracle," Harris said.

Potential Preaching Angle: Church; Body of Christ; Family of God—The church is a lot like that—we think we're living next to total strangers when in reality we are living next to our brothers and sisters.

Jill Carattini's article Transfigured tells the story of a priceless discovery:

Barbara Krensavage insisted that clams are not a regular part of her diet. Yet one snowy evening in December she found herself craving an old recipe and so brought home four dozen quahogs—a clam particularly abundant along the Eastern shores of the United States, between Cape Cod and New Jersey. Mr. Krensavage was in the midst of shucking the shellfish for dinner when he discovered one that looked like it was dead. It had a different color to it and he thought it was diseased. As he was about to discard it, Mrs. Krensavage took a closer look.

It wasn't dead. In fact, inside the live clam was a rare, possibly priceless, purple pearl. Experts estimate that roughly one in two million quahog clams contains a gem-quality pearl like the one found by the Krensavages. Due to the great rarity of the find, it has been difficult to even place a value on it, though some have estimated the pearl to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Jesus as the cornerstone rejected by the builders; (2) the Kingdom of God is like a man who finds a pearl of great price.

Mary Grams of Alberta, Canada, lost her engagement ring while working in her garden back in 2004.

"We looked high and low on our hands and knees," said the 84-year-old Grams. "We couldn't find it. I thought for sure either they rototilled it or something happened to it." And after she speedily bought a replacement, she never told her husband: "I thought for sure he'd give me heck or something."

Recently, however, the ring turned up—on a carrot Grams's daughter-in-law pulled out of the ground.

"I asked my husband if he recognized the ring," her daughter-in-law said. "And he said yeah. His mother had lost her engagement ring years ago in the garden and never found it again. And it turned up on this carrot." (A very odd-looking carrot, at that: "If you look at it, it grew perfectly around the [ring]. It was pretty weird looking.")

Though Grams's husband died five years ago, she plans on wearing her original ring: "[I]t still fits."

Potential Preaching Angles: Perhaps we could slightly paraphrase Jesus' words in Matthew 13 to say, "The kingdom of heaven is like [a diamond engagement ring] hidden [around a carrot] in a field" (v. 44). May we pray for such unexpected moments of joy and discovery as we seek that kingdom!

A group of Minnesota teens were apprehended after attempting to steal a cake from a local grocery store. As if the embarrassment of getting caught by the authorities wasn't enough punishment, it was then discovered that the cake the group had stolen was not even real—it was a cardboard display cake. The grocery store decided not to press charges, but the local police department and news stations did find an opportunity for some fun, posting the story with phrases like "#nocakeforyou" and "not-so-sweet surprise."

Potential Preaching Angles: Sin often comes disguised as something sweet and satisfying, but in the end offers little to quench our hearts' desires. We must remember that the "cake" offered by sin is nothing in comparison to the feast provided for us by our Heavenly Father.