Jimbo's Jots

I am constantly reminded of the way our “expectations” drive us each day. I’m not talking about “I hope I have a good day”. It is “I expect my day to go this way!” Some times it does and other times it doesn’t. What happens then is our emotions are driven by those expectations. So, we have a “good day” or a “bad day” based solely on what we expected to happen and if it did or not.

Here is an example from the Old Testament. Jonah, prophet of God called to preach to the people of Ninevah.

• Expectation #1 – the people of Ninevah are mean and vile people. They will never respond to God’s message, so I’ll run. Jonah’s expectation led to Jonah’s panicking emotion.
• Expectation #2 – Jonah goes and preaches to Ninevah as he was called to do, but “they’ll never repent.” They did! Jonah’s response? Pout and dismay because he wanted judgement on Ninevah, not repentance.

Jonah’s emotional response to God’s call created a lot of frustration and anxiety in Jonah. Because he expected God to respond one way and God responded another way, Jonah was angry and even lashed out at God for showing mercy and justice.

Is this how we respond to unmet daily expectations? Because what can happen is that we  divert our anxious emotion to those expectations to our spouse, our children, or our co-workers. So they experience “the good” of our day or the “bad” of our day on how we treat them

Let’s take our “daily expectations” to God! Let’s make serving Him our goal! After all Jesus did say,

“Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matthew 6:33-34, New Living Translation)

Be blessed and be a blessing!