Advent and Expectations

Have you ever noticed the relationship between your expectations and your contentment?

To grasp what I’m getting at, go back to your childhood. Did you ever ask for that one gift you just had to have only to later face the disappointment of discovering that your anticipated prize was not located in any of the boxes you unwrapped on Christmas morning? Your ability to delight in the gifts you did receive was severely hindered by the disappointment of not receiving the one you did not receive.

So often in life, expectation is the enemy to joy. I can’t delight in my wife as she is if I’m expecting her to be a certain way. I won’t find contentment in an evening at home with my family if I looked forward all day to my dream of what a perfect evening should look like. Expectations too often mandate that the people around us play their part in our own personalized screenplay where our happiness is everyone else’s greatest concern. Life doesn’t work that way.

I believe this is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer was describing when he wrote the following about why so many struggle to find true fellowship in the church: If “we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.”

The problem, according to Bonhoeffer, isn’t the church, but instead the person expecting the church to fulfill some dreamed up ideal about what church life is supposed to look like. Not only does the unfulfilled dream rob the individual of enjoying the real thing, but it also hinders true fellowship—the kind authored by God’s Spirit—from growing in the community. As long as we’re comparing every clumsy real-life interaction with actual imperfect people against the bright standard of our imagined stock photo dream, we miss out on the riches God intends for us.

The expectation trap has a long history. When the eternal Son of God took on flesh and dwelt among us, he was not embraced by the masses. It’s not that the Jewish people weren’t expecting him; they certainly were. The issue was that the Messiah of their dreams was not the same as the Messiah who showed up in a stable in Bethlehem. They could not see the glory of the poor man from Nazareth who conquered the world through service and sacrifice because they had their sights set on a powerful king who would vanquish the world by force. In this tragedy, we see the pattern again. Their expectations caused them to miss out on something greater.

The Advent season—where we train our hearts to wait for Christ’s return—inspires us to look back to Jesus’s first appearance and the people who didn’t miss the glory of what was happening. Consider Mary.

Have you ever thought about Mary’s dreams? I’m sure she had them. By our best calculations, she was a young teenager when the angel told her she would conceive a son as a virgin, and what teenager doesn’t have dreams about the future? She had her whole life in front of her. She must’ve daydreamed about her future with Joseph and what their life together would look like. She had expectations.

And then one day, an angel showed up and shattered everything. Her life was not going to continue as planned. Instead, she was going to have to endure the public shame of an unplanned pregnancy. She would need to give her body—her very life—to God’s cause. She had no idea how it would all work out. She only knew that God had chosen her to bear the one who would be called “the Son of the Most High” who would be given “the throne of his father David” and a kingdom that would have no end (Luke 1:32-33).

How did she respond? How would you respond? I’m struck by Mary’s willingness to so quickly let go of her own dreams and expectations: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Mary’s trust in God’s word frees her to cast aside whatever future she formerly imagined in exchange for the better future God was unfolding through Christ in real time. She refused to let her expectations ruin her enjoyment of God’s better future. God is always doing something better. Don’t let your expectations cause you to miss it.