Here are some comments from another conversation that I am having elsewhere and I thought you might like to eavesdrop:
This chapter (God is a Verb from the book The Shack) has emerged for some as very significant, especially as it unfolds the opposition between trust and ‘our expectations’.
Expectations are one of the dominant ways that we attempt to control our lives, our relationships and God. Largely, they are disappointments waiting to happen. When one has a system of expectations, then ‘I’ become the center of the universe and everything and everyone is subject to my judgment and punishment depending on how they are ‘currently’ meeting up those expectations (whether my expectations have been communicated or not).
Expectations are all about ‘doing’ … about performance. There is little room for ‘being’ within the web of expectations and ‘being’ has little to offer the one trying to control through expectations. "Who cares about who you are as long as you are doing what I think I need and expect." Expectations are largely a substitute for God, or in some sense, the need we have to play God ourselves.
And remember, ‘control’ is all about ‘fear’.
Letting go of ‘expectations’ is soooo risky; it feels like a free fall since our world was held together by that web, but it is in that ‘risk’ that you find a God who does not meet your expectations (thankfully), but loves you and is involved, and in that ‘risk’ is where ‘faith’ grows. Then we begin to live more in the environment of ‘expectancy’, the edgy, free flowing realm of wonder and surprise.
A question about ‘responsibility’:
Slight focus change… ‘ability to respond’ – God give us an ability to respond (which is something that is dynamic and present tense and according to what is in front of us), rather than responsibility (which is static, a rule or principle, and independent of what is in front of us). In fact, when you live a life according to ‘responsibilities’, what is in front of you (the person or situation) can easily become an irritation or impediment to your successfully carrying out your ‘responsibilities’. It is the ‘doing’ that matters, not who is in front of you, or what the situation really is.
‘An ability to respond’ is dynamic, so now the person or situation in front of you becomes significant rather than an impediment, and you no longer draw from some agenda established by ‘responsibilities’ but you find that God who dwells within you joins with you to respond to that person or situation moment by moment as life moves and shifts in its dance.
I love ya, you know…nothing to be concerned about…this is all a process, nothing to be ‘skard’ about…Sarayu will teach you.
-willie
