Blessed Are the UnsatisfiedSýnishorn

The Blessing of Anticipation

My youngest daughter is great at living in the moment. She’s really fun to hang out with because her attention is on what she’s doing, she cares about the person she’s with, and she focuses on the present. And like many people who have her gift, she’s not naturally inclined to make detailed plans for the future. But years ago she figured out that life is more fun if you have something to look forward to. So she started asking me when I tucked her in at night, “What do we have to look forward to?” I would tell her what exciting things were on the calendar for the next couple of months, and she would smile and enjoy the anticipation as she settled in for sleep. 

Now that she’s a teenager, she uses her own student planner and keeps track of the appointments and events that directly affect her. But still, almost every night at bedtime, she naturally turns her thoughts toward what’s next and asks me, “What’s happening tomorrow?” She may not plan far ahead, but like most of us she wants to know what’s coming. And when something exciting is on the horizon, she goes to sleep with a smile on her face. Anticipation makes her life—and ours—sweeter.

If roughly eighty years of learning and forgetting, gaining and losing, succeeding and failing, laughing and crying were enough to satisfy us, we would not long for a world where death and decay are no longer on the march. We would have no reason to look beyond this life to the next. 

When we numb ourselves with platitudes like “Death is just a part of life” and “It just wasn’t meant to be,” we can convince ourselves tragedies aren’t important, grief and loss aren’t bitter, and those who feel overwhelmed by such things are weak or flawed. We can lose touch with the feeling that anything should be different. We can convince ourselves that faith is supposed to function as a soothing tonic, keeping us from wanting—when God wants us to want what he intends to offer all who receive his gracious gifts. 

I believe God wants us to look forward to the realization of redemption, to life in his presence, with great anticipation. I believe he wants us to long for another world and to anticipate it in faith. And living with unsatisfaction helps us do that.

Adapted from Blessed Are the Unsatisfied by Amy Simpson. https://www.ivpress.com/blessed-are-the-unsatisfied