Great Expectations

Written: October 2, 2006

“You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?” declares the Lord Almighty, “because of my house, which remains in ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.” Haggai 1:9

I have been asking, “Why, God, why do you always take it away?” With desperate anguish I would cry out to God with these questions. Questions that were more like accusations really. Like he took away something that was rightfully mine. Something I had “brought home”, you might say.

Well here is my answer. Very clear, very straight forward. God was not first in my life and he would not settle for being replaced or ignored. He will take all that I “bring home” until I finally turn my focus from self to him. I cannot run my own life apart from the one who gave me the very life I try to lead. I cannot be self-sufficient no matter how hard I try. He will not have it.

Oh and the expectations. I expect great things. I expect far too much from all the wrong things. It’s true; I expected much and it turned out to be so very little, so very empty. I cannot fill my life on my own and expect it to mean much when my life is apart from God. I have been far too busy with “my own house” while allowing God’s house to fall to ruin. And somehow in the midst of that I expected great things. It’s not surprising now to see why my life has been filled with one disappointment after another. The fault does not always lay “out there”.

Earlier in the same chapter it says to “give careful thought to your ways.” It says, “you have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.” (vs. 6)

How very true that is of me. I try so hard to be something so great. To be good enough. And nothing much seems to come from it. I harvest little. I “eat and drink” my way through life. Consuming as much as I can; “living life to the fullest” I call it. Taking so much from so many. And yet somehow am never satisfied. It is never enough. I turn to the ways of this world for comfort, to keep warm from the cold storm raging inside of me. I clothe myself with whatever is convenient; friends, shopping, parties, drinking and all the empty lies that promise so much. And still nothing; no lasting comfort. I work and work and earn and earn and somehow always come up short. Money is so very fleeting. My life is a purse with holes in it.

It is at the bottom of this pit where I find myself alone. Hopeless, I think. Yet in the very moment that I give up, the moment I relinquish control because I’m just not good enough and can no longer hold it all together… in the quiet desperation of that moment I hear, “I am with you.”