Disappointment

“You looked for much, and behold, it came to little.” – Haggai 1:9

“Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.” – Charlotte Bronte, Villette

It is so easy to feel disappointed in life, by the outcome of a project or teaching effort, by the person we married or the people we parent, by ourselves, by our friends. Sometimes it’s easy to think like one character in a Patricia McCormick book does: “Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you don’t expect anything, you don’t get disappointed.” How do we live in the face of disappointment without becoming cynical? How do we hope, yet not have the kind of expectation that leads to crushing disappointment?

Here in Haggai, God speaks to a disappointed people. After 70 years of exile, the Israelites had finally been given permission to return to Jerusalem—an event that surely bore the hopes of a lifetime—yet things were not going all that great. They were met on every side by functional disappointment: sowing without harvest, eating without fill, clothing without warmth, earning money only to lose it again. And this is the word that Haggai brings from God: “Consider your ways.” The problem was, they had come back focused on rebuilding their own houses, but neglected to build the house of God. God’s house was the avenue to and symbol of his very presence. They wanted to live life on their own terms, for their own dreams, rather than God’s.

We bear disappointment without becoming cynical by seeing that disappointment is not the end of the story. It is not a call to shut down our hopes, but to reorder them. It is disappointment that guides us to that reordering, that invites us to consider our ways. Disappointment demands that we more closely and carefully examine the nature and foundation of our expectations. Were we placing our hopes in a result or a methodology that was more our own than God’s? Are we willing to accept the workings of his purposes, on his timetable, in our lives? Reordering means that we continue to see and embrace the longing beneath our hopes, but that we yield them to God in a way that “builds his house,” that acknowledges his presence, power and purposes before our own.

Often what this practically feels like is a continual process of naming and submitting my longings in God’s presence. Of praying for the change I hope to see in people rather than demanding that change on my timetable. Of receiving God’s consolation and compassion during moments of despair. Of allowing the natural disappointments in life to strengthen my hopes for eternity. Disappointment should not abolish our hopes, but purify them. May we consider our ways with care as we invite God into those places in our lives.