Expectations

We are hearing a lot about expectations at the moment.  Even before the Olympics had started, there were reports of how many medals Team GB were expected to get and in particular how many gold medals.  There were sports celebrities who were mentioned by name and the expectation to achieve gold medal status.  I felt sad for some whom on the day of their particular sporting final, weren’t able to deliver on the expectations that other people had put on them.  There was little acknowledgement of all the hard work, practice and discipline that they had put in for years, just a sense almost of failure

You can see that same weight put on some children to achieve academic excellence in their exams.  Some parents seem to have the future all mapped out for their offspring without apparently giving much thought to what they would like to do with their lives.  This is true not only in the academic field but in the arts or the entertainment business also where pushy parents almost force their children into a particular career path.  In later years this often leads to maladjusted adults with many mental or emotional problems.  They carry with them the weight of others’ expectations throughout their lives.

There are some individuals who, not through any expectations of others, seem to expect too much of themselves.  It’s as though they want to be all things to all people – an impossible task!  I shall always remember some wise words spoken to a church leader many years ago.  He had spent himself doing everything above and beyond what he needed and the result was that he ended up in hospital totally exhausted and suffering mental and physical breakdown.  His pastoral visitor wisely said that God doesn’t ask us to do what is beyond our capabilities.  We cannot give God more than our all.  God did not make him ill but his unrealistic expectations of himself did that.

Goals and ambitions are good and sometimes people do need a little nudge to help them to keep going when things get difficult but there is great danger in putting too much weight onto the shoulders of others when God is not actually asking them to do that or go along that path of life.  We need wisdom to distinguish between what we should be responsible for and what God is not asking us to do or be involved with.  That is not always easy.  I need to learn from Solomon that sometimes the best prayer is to pray for wisdom to know what to do and what to leave undone.  Maybe some things are someone else’s responsibility, not mine.