Disappointment

Disappointment

Have you had enough disappointment this year?

It would be a mild understatement to say that this year has not gone as planned.

Trips canceled

Celebrations postponed

Jobs lost

Funerals and weddings by zoom

Loved ones sick and dyin

As I heard stories of people’s disappointments, I began asking, what causes disappointment?

Not so much that specific disappointment, but disappointment overall.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that our love for life and our expectations for life open the door for disappointment.  

If we didn’t care what today may bring, if we didn’t have expectations for relationships and goals for life, then we would have little to be disappointed about.

So the greater our disappointment probably speaks to the greater love we have for someone or some pursuit; it points to life—I am alive, I dream.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, 

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

In Psalm 42, the psalmist points to hope as the cure for disappointment.  While disappointment is real, we do not let it have the final answer.  Hope says there is tomorrow, there is another opportunity, there is another door that God will open.

So yes, disappointment and the emotions that come with it will hit us hard, but hope says we are not stuck there.  I will not allow disappointment to shut me down, kill my faith, or stop my dreams.

Hope calls me forward with the confidence that God does have a plan for my life in this new tomorrow.