We all have them. Ideas about how situations are going to go. When they don’t go our way then we are put out. Why do we Expect things to happen according to our plans? It’s nearly impossible to look back on a single day in our life that everything we expected to happen took place. 

Expectation is different from hope. Hope looks for a certain good to come about, but is perfectly content if the outcome is different. Expectation demands. It does not accept other results, or at least not results that we didn’t anticipate. We need to instead mold our Expectations to be accompanied by abandonment.

In a way it goes hand in hand with patience. We become impatient when something went the way we didn’t expect. It’s because we don’t look at every moment of our lives as from the hand of God, and when it’s unpleasant as an opportunity to sacrifice and surrender our will to that of God’s and to at least accept that He allows certain things so that we can grow.

Growth is the essential element of a healthy life. If we aren’t growing spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, physically (as in taking care of ourselves), then we are standing still. There’s nothing worse than being stuck in an Elevator because the purpose of an elevator is to move up or down. The standstill of an elevator is infuriating. So it is in life that we are either progressing upwards or downwards. 

The saints progressed upwards because they loved whatever God did in their life, trusting that even though they could only see the back of the tapestry that the other side would be beautiful.