GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Every new year begins with GREAT EXPECTATIONS and usually slides downhill from there.

This year is going to be GREAT!

This year has turned out GOOD!

This year has been OK!

Then about the time this year becomes the WORST, someone hits the recycle button and its HAPPY NEW YEAR with GREAT EXPECTATIONS!

Charles Dickens’ novel masterpiece Great Expectations examines social class, ambition, love, and redemption through Pip’s journey, showing that loyalty and compassion matter more than wealth or status.

True “great expectations” become real experiences through relationships of cultivated kindness.

Israel and the world had GREAT EXPECTATIONS of a coming King, a Messiah, a Savior. The Christ is coming and he shall be great!

And yet…He was much different from the world’s “great expectations.”

Take a moment to reflect on his relationships of cultivated kindness and his effect on those whose “great expectations” were fading fast or lost entirely.

• A desperate father grieving over his dying daughter
• The ill mother of a friend
• A mother mourning for her dead son
• A blind beggar
• Two sisters weeping over losing their brother
• A man who lost his mind, career, and family
• An adulterous woman
• An emotionally out of control woman
• A paralyzed young man
• A man with a crippled arm
• A man outcast from society because of a horrible disease
• A scandalous woman from the wrong side of the tracks
• A confused aristocrat
• A war-torn soldier
• A condescending religious scholar
• A tax collector
• A tax cheater
• A fearful doubter
• A drowning man
• A frustrated cripple
• A statistically pragmatic nerd
• A meddling mother
• Two proud self-serving brothers
• A fishless fisherman
• A woman overwhelmed with her work
• A dying thief
• A prodigal son
• An arrogant persecutor
• A man crying in the wilderness
• A man wailing in the cemetery
• A woman sobbing at a deathbed
• A little boy who surrendered his lunch
• An older woman who gave away her last penny
• Some dirty-feet travelers
• A guy with a withered hand
• A young inquisitive outdoorsmen
• A contemplative young man sitting under a tree
• A loving cousin
• An injured man with a detached ear
• A brash, boastful know-it-all
• Slow learners
• Non-believing family members
• A rule-keeper in need of freedom
• A misguided patriotic leader
• A confused popular teacher
• A group of men infected with a disabling disease
• A man with a hopeless, incurable condition
• A traitor
• Religious snobs
• Racially prejudiced socialites
• Legal experts sitting on their high horses
• A self-righteous businessman
• An extraordinarily rich lawyer who did not have a clue
• The sick servant of a Roman centurion
• The unnamed woman hated by the indignant religious guys
• The three religious guys, too busy with other things for full commitment
• A man who lost control of his life
• A mother with an out-of-control daughter
• A father caring for his special-challenged son
• The man born blind
• The brothers arguing over their inheritance
• The young politician
• A disloyal friend
• The forgiven prostitute
• The little rich crook up in the tree
• Sinners
• You and me

Jesus treated everyone as having worth and value because they were created in the image of God.

God gave us the greatest gift, the Son of the Most High.

At his birth, the heavenly angelic host showered him with adoration. Poor shepherds came from their fields and flocks to worship him. Wise men brought gifts for a king.

The world changed that night…and so did our GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

Jesus came to live with us, love us, serve us, die for us, and raise us to new life and a heavenly home where it will take all the coming ages of eternity for God to shower us with His immeasurably limitless and infinitely endless goodness (Ephesians 2:7).

Someday we will experience all God is able to do which will exceed far beyond all we can ask, think, or even imagine. It will take God all of eternity to show us the fulfillment of the GREAT EXPECTATIONS promised in God’s Word.

The story of our earthly life will be highly edited. The great, good, ok, not so good, most painful, and worst experiences will still be part of the story, but we will be freed from the heavy weightiness of this lifetime’s gravity.

We will not carry any emotional baggage into heaven, just memories colored in GREAT EXPECTATIONS of everlasting joy and limitless love.

We will see clearly that Jesus was always with us and for us in every new year…and now infinitely forever.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS!

O come let us adore Him this New Year…CHRIST THE LORD!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! EYES UP!

MAY YOUR BLESSINGS EXCEED THE GREAT EXPECTATIONS OF YOUR DREAMS!