When Good Things Disappoint Us - Finding Rest in a Restless World

“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Isaiah 53:3, KJV)

“So we say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?’” (Hebrews 13:6, NIV)

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” (Revelation 21:4, NLT)

We have reflected on the way the human heart so easily takes good things and makes them ultimate things, finding in them our sense of worth and purpose. God calls us to love Him above all else because only He is worthy of such love. Nothing else can bear that weight because nothing else is God. He knows the fragility of life, how the things of this world cannot, in themselves, sustain us. When we ask of them what they were never made to deliver, they often break our hearts.

No person, vocation, home, or family can satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts. But even when the objects of our love are rightly ordered, they can still disappoint us. Christ Himself was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3, KJV).

To be human is to know loss.

Perhaps we were wounded by someone we trusted, or a relationship fractured in ways we never expected. Maybe we gave our best to something we believed in, and still it fell apart. When what we love fails us, the illusion of permanence falls away, and we become aware of our need for God.

Sometimes these losses hurt so deeply that it is hard to even speak them aloud.

After standing before the highest tribunal in the land and awaiting judgment, the apostle Paul later reflected, “At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. . . . But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength. . . . And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth” (2 Timothy 4:16-17, NIV).

Paul, while living according to his calling, still experienced abandonment. He didn’t hide this but acknowledged and named it. Yet, even when everyone else deserted him, the Lord remained near, to strengthen him and deliver him.

Like Paul, we can state our losses while also knowing those losses do not define us.

It is in this same spirit that the prophet Habakkuk testified, “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails . . . yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights” (Habakkuk 3:17-19, NIV).

God does not spare us from loss, but He gives us Himself, the fountain of all life, joy, and goodness. And He promises that He will never leave us or forsake us. So we can say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid” (Hebrews 13:6, NIV).

He goes behind, before, and beside us, our strength and our deliverer.

No matter what we face, we never face it alone. And in the end, there will come a time when brokenness will be no more, when every tear will be wiped away, and all things will be made whole (Revelation 21:4).

Thoughts to Ponder

What griefs or disappointments do you carry today? Bring them to Jesus. You can entrust them to Him, knowing that He loves you and cares for you.