Disappointment is that feeling where you know that things haven’t happened as you had expected. You have this picture in your mind’s eye about how something will turn out and BAM, everything falls into pieces. It might have been a job offer, a business opportunity, a relationship, or even your expectations of God that just didn’t live up to what you’d thought they’d be but whatever it was, it wasn’t what you pictured.
Disappointment doesn’t mean that everything went bad though, it’s not like when you fail but still…not everything turned out as you thought it would. Maybe you set the bar too high (I’ve been there before). Maybe you were naive in your expectations (I would know what that feels like too. Been there, done that, burned the t-shirt.)
Or maybe you’re disappointed because you’re looking at it from the wrong angle. Maybe if we try to pull up for a proverbial 30,000 foot view of the situation we might see the whole picture and realize that our expectations were never right in the first place. It’s not that our expectations were wrong; it’s just that our idea of what’s best at the time wasn’t actually the best thing for us at that time.
God has a history of exceeding people’s expectations. I wonder what the Israelites’ expectations were once they left slavery in Egypt…only to get to the Red Sea. Trapped. Surrounded. Doomed. Question: if they had never gotten to the Red Sea would the Egyptian army have been destroyed? Maybe. Maybe not. All I know is that I’d rather have the confidence of complete deliverance than just the promise of deliverance any day.
Disappointment can be a defining moment when we realize that our expectations could have been completely out of whack and we’ve been chasing what’s good when what’s best is still yet to come. God is in the business of providing what’s best for those He loves, even if we don’t realize it at the time.