Saturday, we went shopping because my husband needs some new eyeglasses. Since the optometrist office is rather expensive, we decided to check out another local store in a new shopping center.
When we got there the store was not yet open, so we went to a new donut shop my husband wanted me to try. You could order any toppings you wanted on a vanilla donut that was baked at the time of the order and marching down a conveyor belt.
It was a cute and profitable idea, judging from the group of people that lined up behind us. We ate quickly to accommodate others and since the eyeglass store was still not open, we headed across the street to the Williams Sonoma store.
Christmas items were on clearance and I was drawn in by a cookie tin with a description of cherries, berries, and nuts with dark chocolate. The clerk assured me one of the workers had purchased it and said it was very good, especially the chocolate cherries. So, I bought it and the we headed to the eyeglass store.
When we arrived home, I couldn’t wait to open this candy. I was expecting dark chocolate covered cherries and dark chocolate covered nuts.
When I opened the container, I couldn’t believe what I saw!
My husband stared, I stared, there in this very large tin was a small bag of trail mix!
What? I was expecting dipped chocolates and my husband just groaned.
Then he picked up the bag to reveal it was packed inside a plastic holder revealing that the package was only half the size of the original tin.
What a misrepresentation he said.
We were both disappointed.
Still, the good news was that I hadn’t paid, $29.95 for it, which was the original price.
Really $29 for a bag of trail mix, what are you thinking Williams Sonoma!
But I had it now, so I opened it and poured the contents into a candy dish.
I watched as the nuts, dried cherries and small chocolate chunks poured into the dish.
Interesting how advertising can fool you. But had I read it more carefully I would have seen that the description was accurate.
Luckily no one had given this to me as a gift. I don’t think I would have been able to hide my disappointment.
But throughout the day as we munched on it, we realized that it was pretty good stuff, just not the stuff we thought it was going to be.
I think we can find that in our prayer life sometimes too.
We pray for something specific, but we don’t get the answer we hope for and we get disappointed.
Sometimes we receive a “no” to our prayers, and other times we seem to be in a waiting mode with no clear answer. Either way our disappointment surfaces because we didn’t get what we expected as an answer to prayer.
But if we look back through the years we can probably recall a time when our prayers weren’t answered as expected, yet, the answer was an answer that was exactly what we needed at the time.
Sometimes the answer to our prayer comes as a big surprise, something we didn’t even anticipate.
They key is to keep praying, for even if disappointment may be our first response, it doesn’t need to be our last response.
Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. Philippians 4:6
Perspectives: From Lynn 