What Are You Expecting?

I remember the first time I visited Pensacola, Florida. My pal Lisa, on a mission to get us to move here, was driving me around a neighborhood called East Hill. It’s one of the older neighborhoods in town, full of little beach cottages, wide front porches, and 400-year old oak trees, dripping with Spanish Moss.

I remember saying: This is my dream neighborhood. Look at how everybody is walking their dogs, riding bikes and saying hello from their porches. It’s precious. I imagined in my heart what it would look like to live here and it felt so so good.

Five years later, I am sitting on my porch, in East Hill, and everybody is walking their dogs, riding bikes and saying hello from their porches.

Our expectations are powerful drivers.

A few years ago, I developed a now-powerful habit when I read my Bible. It’s based on a prayer St. Augustine was known to pray:

Who are you God, and who am I?

That’s my life’s great question now too.

Since the Coronavirus began, I’ve been reading the Psalms, very slowly, looking for the answers to those two questions. As I read, I highlight in pink any verse that describes the nature and character of God. In yellow, I highlight scriptures that describe who I am as His child.

I used to believe when good things happened in my life, I was blessed, and when bad things happened, I was not blessed. A lot of people think this way, and of course there are many “If you will, then I will,” instructions in scripture, but we can get so binary and simplistic about it.

King David was joyful and King David complained. His life was in danger and he danced naked in the streets. David groaned under the weight of depression and he sang. Israel was under attack. Israel was prosperous. Israel was in famine. People were dying. People were thriving. Enemies were winning. Enemies were dying.

This is the way of things.

Trouble will happen, Jesus said it would, but in parts of my country, there has been such abundance and relative ease for so long, trouble is the surprising exception, not the rule. So of course, people are trying to make sense of it.

But it’s easy to ask the wrong questions. Coronavirus has visited my family, am I blessed or not blessed? My life is hard, has God left me? Things are dark, does God even love me?

Reading the Psalms is good for this.

David had struggle, warfare, desolation and trials we can’t imagine. His strategy was to ventilate what he felt, freak out over it AND to expect deliverance. David knew God and experienced ecstasy in His presence, even while his circumstances were disastrous. We know this, because he wrote it down.

So what do you envision for your life? What do you expect?

When we have trouble, like we do now, it’s tempting to think God has left the building. People said it to David, they said it to Jesus…”Where’s your God now?”

But God doesn’t leave the building. Rather, He promises that all things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose - like King David. This is a far less binary, yes/and approach to life, because it leaves room for the paradox of faith, which is both struggle and hope.

The Psalms are love poems, complaints and laments full of exuberance and pain, written by people who got knocked down and depressed, who soaked their pillows with tears and chose God anyway.

What if that was our approach to Coronavirus? What if we complained and railed, having freak-out meltdowns with God WHILE expecting Him to deliver us into something better and deeper on the other side of the madness.

If that feels impossible to you, read the Psalms slowly and be amazed by God’s repeated rescue and provision for the Nation of Israel - even when everything looked impossible.

Truthfully, that’s the story of the whole book.