God's Love Goes Beyond Expectations

Our summer theme verse at Camp Metigoshe is God's love goes beyond. I wrote this for our day theme of; God's love goes beyond expectations!

Genesis: 12:1-9

The Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haraan. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the Land of Canaan, and they arrived there. Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Schechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Aram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.

How would you define expectations? One way that I might define it is “something that you strongly believe will happen or the vision of how you want something to happen.” Some expectations that I have dealt with and sometimes still do, are the expectations of who I am going to get along with, what my job roles include, how I should act. Maybe you are expected to be the strong one in your friend group, the one who always has to make the decisions, maybe you are expected to be the artistic one, or the one that is going to follow in your parent’s footsteps. I have many expectations for myself, that include; being non-judgmental, being always available for people, being a hard worker. In the same way that I have these expectations for myself, Abram and Sarai had some similar expectations for their life. Their expectations for their life may have been not to move again, to not have any children and many others. They were in their 70s, with no children, moving to a new land where they may have felt very out of place. Have you ever had to move? Or go somewhere where you maybe didn’t feel welcomed? Maybe you want to try a new sport or club but you don’t think the people in that group like you very much or maybe you have moved to a completely new city or state where you know no one. You may have felt lonely, scared, anxious, maybe you had feelings of excitement as well. I am sure that Abram and Sarai felt a mix of emotions, some including feeling scared and lonely because the expectations that they had for their life, were not lining up with the Call from God to move to a new land. Even though it may have been scary and it wasn’t what they were expecting for their life, God gave them a nation. God provided for them. God still loved them and had plans for them in this new place. God went beyond their expectations for their own lives. When you tried these new things or you moved to a new place, something tends to work out, right? Maybe you made a new friend in the club, maybe the new sport you tried is now your favorite, maybe you were able to have new experiences because of it. It could be many things, but usually something good comes out of it. Even though the expectations that you have for your life and how you want it to go, change, when God nudges you to something new, even if you’re scared to try it or step out of your comfort zone, God still loves you. God loves you through the change. God loves you when your expectations get flipped upside down. God loves you beyond expectations.

Better Together, Jess