Expectation

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A couple nights ago I had some sort of dream - don't remember what. But I remember I received a bag of some sort of candy that doesn't exist in real life. (Thus go our dreams.) I was excited about eating it, and put it aside for later. Bad things happened in my dream, although again I don't remember what. But I always remembered in the back of my mind that I had that candy to eat later. I was disappointed when I woke up and knew that I didn't have any candy.

Call it trivial. A similar thing happened yesterday at Love 'n Stuff practice. In addition to our usual Papa John's fare, supplied by a cheerful Nate lustily singing some hymn that had been rewritten to be about pizza, Chris Maresco also brought in his almost-uneaten birthday cake from that day and gave it to Mrs. Mays. She said we could have some after drama practice. So in the next few hours during which we practiced, ad-libbed, and laughed, I kept that thought - subconsciously, even - in my mind, that there was cake later. I was disappointed when everyone else left without remembering the cake, and so Mrs. Mays decided to just take the whole thing home to be put to good use by her family.

Yesterday I was thinking this over - before the cake incident, actually - and it called to mind something I read in Bruce Olson's missionary autobiography, Bruchko. Olson writes about his experience translating the Scriptures into the language of the Motilone Indians of Venezuela, and especially with conveying these Biblical concepts using thoughts they could relate to and understand.

Bobby and I worked on the translation of Philippians.... As we worked through the first chapter, we came to verse 20, where Paul says that his great expectation is that he will not be put to shame, but that Christ will be exalted in him whether in life or death.

I needed the right word for expectation. A Motilone expects to go to bed at night, but that word doesn't have m much force.

The center of emotion for a Motilone is his stomach. To have a full stomach is to have a happy heart. What was the surest way of having a full stomach? Probably to have hunted and killed a large tapir. You eat tapir until you can't eat any more.

So I took the verb for having a tapir in your possession, and I invented a new tense: I put it in a future tense that has apready been completed, then I made it superlative.

I gave Bobby the word. It shocked him. "No," he said, "that's too big a word. It's too forceful. How can you expect something as much as that?"

We let it drop, but it must have bothered Bobby. Two or three days later he said, "Bruchko, let's go back to that word."

"All right," I said.

He was quiet for a while, thinking, then said, "Bruchko, is Jesus Christ the expectation for you in your life? Really?"

That stopped me short. It's one thing to figure out the right word to use; it's quite another thing to be asked if it's true of your own life. I thought of my conversion and of some of the crises I had weathered with the Yukos and the Motilones. Finally, after a long silence, I said, "Yes."

Then I nodded vigorously. "Yes, Bobby, with all my strength and all my will I want to give myself to the expectation of Jesus Christ."

Bobby looked down at his feet. "Yes," he said. "It's a good word."

"Are you sure?" I asked.

He nodded.

I think sometimes I'm a Motilone. Sometimes what the Bible says doesn't make sense to me, really, to my heart, until it's put in a context so simple and trivial that even I can understand and identify with it.

Now I'm thinking - wow: my trust in Jesus Christ and His perfect work being completed in my life needs to be so secure that it's always there, in my mind, like knowing (even when I'm thinking about something else) that I'm getting cake later. Or that I have a tapir and that I will be satisfied and full. Am I trusting Jesus Christ to satisfy me completely? Do I "feel confidence in Him for the present and the future," as Spurgeon said?

Sometimes I can be so focused on whether or not I think God controls my present circumstances that I forget that He not only has control of now, but of everything to come.

"... as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death." - Philippians 1:20

God wants Jesus Christ to be my expectation - my complete, full, absolutely convinced assurance that He will glorify Himself in me. And He is glorified just by being my expectation - by being that foundational knowledge, excitement, and hope, even while I'm busy with the cares of the world - that no matter what's happening right now, we are going to have cake.