Have you ever let someone down? Told a hurting friend you’d meet them for coffee and then totally spaced it out? Forgot you were supposed to make the cupcakes for your first grader’s 100th Day party? Decided to go out after work with co-workers instead of suffering through, um I mean, attending the middle school band concert?
Or has anyone ever let you down? A loved one cancels plans to visit at the last minute. Two of your best friends announce they are splitting up. Or just when you think it’s finally going to be the year, the Vikings totally choke in the playoffs against the Giants.
Disappointing others. It’s what people do. That may sound like a cynical and jaded perspective, but I insist that it’s true. It is both true and terrifying. And yet we don’t need to be shocked or shaken.
There’s just a part of adulting that includes a realistic awareness and acceptance of universal human frailty and failure. Whether it’s mildly annoying or crushingly painful: People disappoint us.
What can we do?
Look to the only One who doesn’t.
There are hundreds of reasons us Christians make a big deal about Jesus. Let’s consider just one:
He is the only truly faithful man.
He never gets up on the wrong side of the bed and bites your head off before he’s had his coffee. He never says one thing and then does another. He never berates with sarcasm or criticism. He’s not a hypocrite. He never leaves, never lies, never fails.
In a world where every single person is a disappointment, Jesus is supremely different.
So, we look to Him. We trust Him. We worship Him.
Because Jesus takes losers like us, who perpetually disappoint one another and God, and He saves us anyway. He loves us anyway. He forgives us anyway. He renews and restores and resumes His work in us anyway.
He does this willingly, perfectly, and at great personal cost. No one else can. No one else would. If you put too much hope or expectation on any other person you will eventually be deeply disappointed. Only one man deserves that kind of trust and reliance.
So when I say He’s faithful, that’s what I mean. And I simply adore Him.
“God is not a man, that he might lie, or a son of man, that he might change his mind. Does he speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?” (Numbers 23:19).
Thankful for Jesus,
