It is the beginning of another school year in Tallahassee. It’s a time of promise and expectation. Walking through the first “Market Wednesday” on campus, bumping into organization after organization trying to get members – I felt that promise and expectation. There are 6,000 new students on campus. They feel it. They have been accepted and have enrolled in one of the best schools in the Southeast. Some of them have made their way through Bid Day and have gotten to be a part of the sorority of their choice. Some of them are filled with expectations of meeting members of the opposite sex, while others are filled with expectations of deepening their knowledge and wisdom. It is this feeling of potential, of promise, of expectation. 
I have that feeling inside me too. The beginning of the school year means that I have the promise and expectation of getting to know a new person or two in a deep way. I get to know about their life, their background, and about their faith. Honestly, I believe that is the blessing that God has given me in this call and vocation – to get to see what He is doing in the lives of people around me, and actually get to be a part of what He is doing.
But promise and expectation has a backspin. That backspin is heartbreaking for me, for all humans. Promises get broken and expectations are proven to be untenable. And when that happens, you’re left with disappointment and questions. That’s a tough place to be. I know because I’m there as a regular part of my vocation. There are days that seem like the measure of being a good pastor or campus minister is to see how often you can get kicked in the teeth and keep going. Maybe that’s every vocation, in fact, it probably is.
It’s enough to make you swear off promise and expectation, to leave it to the freshmen with their wide eyed and unaware psyches. It’s enough to get cold and cynical, laughing off the naivete of hope. And that is exactly the moment when I need Jesus. I need Jesus because I need a reason to hope. Because this world doesn’t offer me a hope that lasts. This world offers me hope that will indeed, one day, be proven as naive. This world offers me promise and expectation that is momentary, but eventually is doomed to disappoint. Only God can offer me something that is beyond this job’s potential, beyond this friend’s potential, beyond this family’s potential, beyond this world’s potential. And He does offer that to me.
Far too often when I’m in that tough place, it’s because I’ve put my hope in the promise and expectation of the world. God tells me to shift that to put my hope in Him, and that He will in turn, use me and my other-aligned hope to show others a different hope, a different promise, and a different expectation. May it be so for all of us.