If you are alive for any amount of time, you will be disappointed. How many and how intense are the disappointments I face! Sometimes I live my life on land, occasionally approaching the water’s edge of disappointment, dipping in a toe or wading in to my knees. It gets harder to breathe when it’s up to my shoulders and neck, but other times I am swimming in-over-my-head in disappointments, coming up briefly to gasp for air, then returning to drowning. No matter how long you live or how old you are, to live is to be disappointed.
But be of good cheer! Disappointment can be helpful because it shows us how the world really is. Disappointment itself is not fun, but it points us to God and to a greater hope, how things are supposed to be. Disappointment shows us our brokenness and the broken world we live in, and how God is working to restore joy and wholeness. We were not made for disappointment, and we look forward to a time of perfection and no more tears or fears. God is making all things new.
In the beginning, God created, and all was good. He put Adam and Eve in the garden (Genesis 2:8) and there was peace, harmony, and joy. Adam and Eve lost their spot, however, when they rebelled and disobeyed in sin. God sent them out of Eden into disappointment, a world of death and decay (Genesis 3:8-24), a world of anger, bitterness, and thorns, which we know very well. But we remember the garden, and we know God is bringing His people back to it. We have hope and expectation, we know God is reconciling the world to Himself, through Himself, His son, our Savior, the perfect sacrifice. Through His death and resurrection, we can have new life and look forward, passed the daily disappointments, to a time of no more pain or sorrows.
The sufferings and disappointments we face are real, but smaller pictures of the larger view. People, organizations, and circumstances will disappoint. Lost jobs, broken families, poor health and illnesses, or failed relationships point us to our heavenly home. We stand on Jordan’s stormy banks and cast a willful eye; we are bound for the promised land! This world doesn’t provide ultimate satisfaction; it can’t. If you want to handle disappointment in a godly way, know this truth, work through the issues, forgive those who wrong you, and embrace the Lord. Look forward to your heavenly home, where there is no disappointment.
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