I expected better than this...

I don't know if you have a Whole Foods grocery market near where you live or not...but I don't. However, every Saturday morning my wife and I drive up to the big city for Spanish class. There is a Whole Foods near our class so we stop in for a little shopping sometimes when we pass by. One of the things they offer at the store is a hot and cold food bar with a variety of items to eat in or take home and that area is ALWAYS very busy,,,especially on a Saturday. So, nosy me wanted to see what the buzz was all about so we decided to have lunch... at the grocery. Two words...bad idea. Apparently the people who shop here and think that this food is something to get jostled around for are either crazy, really hungry or desperate to make the local quasi hipster scene. Seriously, I was surprised at how bad the food was. To steal a local cliche...”I shaved my legs for this?” really fit here. The food was way undercooked and essentially flavorless. I think my wife summed it up best when she said, “ I expected better than this...”. Yeah, me too...So, I started thinking about how our expectations can ruin things. Expectations are a funny thing. They are a mechanism of control in the purest form. We , in effect, are trying to predict and influence an outcome by merely what we think. WOW...is that ever mind control...or what? We set up an expectation of something, someone or anything and when it doesn't match up we are disappointed. It seems this happens to us so many times and in immeasurable ways. I know that I have been guilty of it a lot...but I think I am getting better as I get older. The problem is that we most frequently expect the unlikely or the unobtainable...we set the bar high. I mean really...how good could food... not freshly prepared sitting in pans on a steam table...in a grocery store....really be. Our expectations are so high we never leave even the slightest room to be pleasantly surprised. We, in effect anticipate the unrealistic...a lot. I think it is helpful to recognize that an expectation is both a creative and personal thing and thus we all may have very different expectations of the exact same thing. Any given expectation is based on our imagination and experience. So, many of us are doomed with unrealistic expectations about most everything based on those two facts alone. So back to my lunch at the grocery. As bad as I personally thought it was, apparently many others had a much lower expectation than myself. I am sure someone living in dire poverty would have thought it a supreme feast. Great...so now I feel like a jerk to complain and feel entitled enough to even eat there. So, I thought how these same failed expectations can disillusion me as a Christian. We set God up in so many different ways. We often times treat God in the same manner as many of our earthly relationships in that we set them up to fail. We have to realize that since these expectations are a product of our making we personally need to accept responsibility for their success or failure. However, this is rarely the fact as we place blame and put our sometimes blatant disappointment on others. We listen to incessant negative self talk in our heads. How arrogant and self serving of us to question God in some perceived failure of Him to meet OUR expectations. As ridiculous as it sounds that is exactly what we do...a lot. I am thinking of a classic example...I thought God would heal me. You cannot have any kind of expectation of what God will do without strong faith in His ability to accomplish the task at hand. You ask to be healed but yet your ever so tiny amount of doubt and lack of true belief in miracles stands in the way. It would appear once again that with these types of expectations we are right smack back to that control issue. My expectation is that it will happen in this way and in this time frame. Maybe it will...maybe it won't. We love to impose our requirements onto Gods will and timing. If it doesn't go the way you expect then it interferes with your faith and relationship with God. What happens when people don't get healed and they die....what happens when a loved one gets taken very unexpectedly? We say the same thing...well, I never expected things to go like this. Do you think God did? Of course, He did but that is not very comforting in our time of grief. I thought it would go like this...my expectation was...life was gonna be easier if I became a Christian...Really? That was your expectation? Do we really expect that we will always get our way because that is what we honestly expect God will do? Really? Yeah, we do. And what happens when we don't ? We pout...we place blame...we may even withdraw and become depressed. There are many reactions but we generally don't analyze any root cause for these failures but mostly because we don't want to see our hand in them. I have been a disappointment to my children and they to me because of expectations. I have hurt and disappointed people that I have loved because I just couldn't measure up sometimes. I still don't measure up sometimes and fall short of an expectation someone has placed on me based on the little they know about me. I hate that. I hate to be a disappointment based on some unknown standard that I am held up to. I really don't know the answer or the way around that one...I wish I did. Perhaps it's simply just getting to know me better...seeing my weaknesses...my abilities...my heart. I am just as guilty of this as anyone else but as I said earlier I think I am getting better about not holding the bar so high. I really just am trying mostly to concentrate on the expectations that God has for me...”To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God”. That's all...no more...no less...and if doing that... then you're meeting some big expectations and I doubt if you would ever hear...”I expected better than this...”