Earlier this week I blogged about disappointment and how, if we aren’t careful, it can breed other things like hopelessness and anger. Before you read this installment, be sure to read part 1. That being said, I’ve been thinking and reflecting more on disappointment and have a few more thoughts on the whole topic…
In the last blog I began with a quote from Alexander Pope in which he said, “blessed is the man who expects nothing for he shall never be disappointed.” Why do we expect things from people? We expect things from people because we hunger for God. Some would even say that we expect things from God. We’ve been given so much already and in a lot of ways we live our lives like the “If You Give A Mouse a Cookie” book – we get one thing and then we want another, and another, and another, and…you get the point. I was telling one of my friends last night that the only Man I’m dating is Jesus and He loves me no matter what. Then, in a perfect blend of harsh reality and a loving reminder she said that I don’t deserve Him. She’s exactly right – I don’t deserve Him and I certainly don’t have the right to expect things from God. Hope for things from Him? Sure. Expect or demand? No way. The difference between hope and expect is this: when we hope we believe that something is possible, when we expect we believe that not only is something possible, but that it is quite probable to occur. Expectations are like hope on steroids, its like a drunken happiness – it feels nice at the time but then the hangover comes. We hope for the best in people, we hope for the best from God. We are disappointed when we expect things to happen and they don’t. That’s how we get to a point where we don’t expect things – we hope for them and we take the steroids out of the hope equation.
We were created in the image of perfection and at our cores we long for the fulfillment of that perfection which was originally ours in the Garden of Eden, we long for that perfection which can only be found in God. We are disappointed when our reality is different from that which we are created for, that which we are ultimately headed for. We are disappointed when people or situations turn out to be anything less than the perfection we were made for, we are disappointed when we seek anything but God as the fulfillment of our hopes, dreams and aspirations. Today and everyday, let us hope in God, let us seek Him and be filled in Him before we try to fill the God-shaped whole in our hearts with anything but the One who made us.
