Great expectations. No, I'm not thinking about the book. I'm thinking about the concept, the idea. Very few of us have gone too long without having had a "great expectation" of some sort.

Perhaps you have watched the Braves stretch out their lead during the baseball season such that, by mid-summer, you begin to get that "great expectation"...World Series Champions! Well, that's been dashed a few times, hasn't it!

Then for students there are the expectations of "killing" that final and getting an "A" for the course. That doesn't always happen either. Or when we were (or are) teenagers we had (or have) certain expectations about that person we are dating for the first time and sadly staying home with the parents often would have been more fun. A lot of retired folks today find their retirement dollars don't go nearly as far as their early expectations led them to believe.

Great expectations are common on the job, at school, at play and for the young as well as the elderly. In spite of our proclivity for expecting great things we are also aware of the dangers of expecting too much. The idea that if something is too good to be true the best course is to stay clear. We may also sometimes feel that things must be terribly complicated in order to have value.

I thought of these things when I came across a man named Naaman, in this week's daily Bible readings who had the interesting problem of having expectations that were not met and a solution that seemed far too simple. 2 Kings 5:10-12 (NLT), "But Elisha sent a messenger out to him with this message: ‘Go and wash yourself seven times in the Jordan River. Then your skin will be restored, and you will be healed of leprosy.' But Naaman became angry and stalked away. ‘I thought (expectation #1) he would come out and meet me! ... I expected (expectation #2) him to wave his hand over the leprosy and call on the name of the Lord his God and heal me!'"

If, at last, he hadn't listened to his officers and done the simple thing he had been instructed to do, poor Naaman would have lost "the whole ballgame."

Today we are concerned about the prospects for some day having true world peace yet it seems that no matter what we do or what our expectations for success, global peace eludes us. Perhaps, in the end it really comes down to doing a simple thing on a global scale. Love each other as I have loved you."(John 15:12b NIV). It's certainly worth trying.

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