Anticipation

When you go on an Emmaus walk, you are cautioned to "not anticipate."

We all do it.  We anticipate the weather, what will happen at work the next day, what our scores will be on a test, what will arrive in the mail each day -- the list is endless of what we anticipate.

When I was pregnant, I read a story about birth, and how it works along with anticipation.  When you are pregnant, you have expectations of what the baby will be like when he/she is born.  The birth of a child, and the end of the expectations, is wonderful, but it also means that we have to let go of what we anticipated, so in some ways that we might not realize, it is sad.  For example, before we know if a baby is a boy or a girl, we imagine both outcomes.  We think about the boy, and what he will be like.  We imagine the girl, in all of her glory.  Then, when a girl is born, the anticipation of the boy is ended.  Later, we can't imagine any other outcome, but at first, anticipation is ended.

In JtM's sermon today, he talked about John's anticipation of a Messiah, and how those expectations were different from reality.

Don't we do that in our expectations of God?  We think we know what he will do, how he will act, and when his ways are different from what we expect, we feel let down.  In our anticipation, are we trying to form God in our own image?  Instead of the other way around?