Hope to Receive

One of my good friends tries not to set unreasonable expectations for how an event will go. She’s been burned in the past, and struggled to have a good attitude. We’ve all been there. I mean, even when playing Settlers of Catan and just setting up for the first couple of turns, so often I find that I had expected things to go differently, and now what am I going to do?

Recently, my friend was talking about her plans for the summer, and she hopes that it will accomplish this and that for her family. Internally, I scoffed. It sounded like one of those expectations that is very likely to be unmet. But then I caught myself. Love hopes for good. And these things are deep, significant goods that these people I love do need. And so, it is not bad to hope for them.

But is there a difference, I wondered, between expectations and hope? One of my thoughts was that hope holds hands open. When we hope, we are waiting for a gift, and we recognize that, in many cases, we may not receive it. And when we don’t, we don’t have anything to complain about. Whereas expectations imply a little more about rights, and a little more about control. And again, if we do receive the thing, with hope, it isn’t something where we sniff and say, “about time!” No, we get a chance to rejoice, to feel loved by the Giver and Doer of good things.

So we’re hoping, this summer, and daring even to build plans in alliance with our hopes.