Expectations

Expectations are the thoughts, feelings that the likely or for certain will occur. Such as when you take off in an airplane, you expect it will rise in the air and come down safely at your destination. You expect that your car will take you 60 miles in one hour down the roads of your journey. You expect that the bridge you are crossing will get you safely over the river. We expect those things to work for us. We take them for granted so much of the time. If we don't have these expectations, we probably live in fear and worry.

Isn't a bridge, an airplane, or a car just a miracle? Think about what man has created that assists us on our journeys to our destinations. The ingenuity it took man to create and continuously perfect the car, airplane and bridge. But as we all know, bridges, airplanes and cars don't always work the ways we expect. We expect that using the airplane, car or bridge will keep us safe and lead us to our destinations. However, we expect Mother Nature to give us floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts or heat waves now and then. Since we can't control Mother Nature, we are so much more accepting of it's fury and what we'd call Mother Nature's negative aspects. Isn't it ironic that those things that man created and maintains, we expect only the best and most perfect from, yet those things we can't control such as weather, we expect the worst but hope for the best.

There is a verse in the Bible and I can't remember where, but the concept is about NOT putting your trust/faith in things made of man, but trust & have faith in God. Even long before cars and airplanes, man was being admonished to get their priorities right!

I don't think that getting our priorities right means that we need to fear getting into our cars and airplanes and traveling on the ground and in the air. I don't think that we need to fear going over every bridge we encounter. In fact, as much as the news about the bridge collapse in Minnesota saddened and concerned me, the next morning I got in my car and I went over several bridges (overpasses) and never once felt fearful, in fact I did not even think about the bridge collapse.

Getting my priorities right may mean that I need to expect that airplanes will sometimes fall to the ground, that a car will stop working or crash into another, that a bridge will fall. Getting my priorities right may mean that I need to believe that God was there holding people in His arms as the airplane, car or bridge crashed. I need to trust and hope that God was there for them. Getting my priorities right means that I need to believe, trust and hope that God is here for me. No matter what happens!