I was not born into a rich family, and sometimes our parents had to say ‘no’ to a lot of things that other kids had. I still remember there were times I was disappointed that I could not go on a trip with my friends and was very upset about that. That’s when my dad used to say this sentence ‘great expectations, great disappointments.’ This quote struck me differently as an adult. We all have expectations about how our life should be. In relationships and friendships, we expect someone to do something for us. We get angry and upset when life does not go how we want or if someone does not behave in a certain way.
Does that mean I can’t have any expectations in life? I think we can have expectations from people, but it should not be a surprise if they disappoint us because they were never created to meet all our expectations. According to Hannah Whitall Smith, “No soul can be really at rest until it has given up all dependence on everything else and has been forced to depend on the Lord alone. As long as our expectations are from other things, nothing but disappointment awaits”. Even with God, we expect Him to do a miracle in a situation, and when He doesn’t do something, we get disappointed and sometimes angry. Does that mean God also disappoints us? This has been the question that I have been wrestling with.
The book of James talks about ‘God’s Will,’ it says before we say we will do this or that tomorrow, we need to ask if it is God’s Will. It is ok to have expectations from God, but we must also submit that to God’s will. For example, Jesus submitted to God’s will when He was about to get crucified. God’s will for Jesus was to go through suffering for the greater good to allow everyone to be saved. According to Matthew 26:39, “If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine” (New Living Translation). God knows the bigger picture, and we can trust Him that He knows what’s best for us. Sometimes suffering and disappointments might be allowed in our life to work on our character to make us more like Jesus. We need to surrender our disappointments to God and trust Him to help us walk through them.
