Anticipation

A month ago, my friend, Jim W., gave me an apple-sized jar of “Tart Cherry Jam.” We are both lovers of the fruit, mainly when an abundance of them are stuffed in between two pie crusts. The jar’s contents were fantastic! In just a few days, all but a spoonful was extracted and delighted in. I am having difficulty not finishing that last spoonful of red tart goo. But I don’t want it to be all gone. As long as there is a little left in the jar, I can keep the experience alive by anticipating the fruit delicacy.

When I eventually empty the little jar, there will not be an atom left. I will most likely run my pointer finger around the interior sides to get every bit of flavor out of the jar and into my mouth. This digital cleaning will be done when no one is around. It’s a very private thing. Jan will again be disgusted by my lack of appropriate sanitation and civilized decorum.

As per the title, I am thinking about “anticipation.” In particular, I am pondering positive anticipation. There is a more sinister type, but not for today.    Anticipation is the emotional distance between what we desire and the fulfillment of that desire.

We had a friend over for lunch after church one Sunday. We set before her a dish of ice cream. After I had finished my serving, Jan asked if she would like something different. She said, “Oh, no. I’m just enjoying the anticipation of what it will taste like.”

When we were in our Santa Clause years, the time between making our “wish list” and Christmas Day morning allowed our juvenile desires to crescendo. In my case, I do not remember a time my anticipation was not fulfilled. What I had wished for but did not receive was swallowed in the joy of what I did receive. Yet, I had no anticipations for the next day by bedtime that night. The Christmas rush was over, burned out. By their fulfillment, my desires lost the wonder of their expectation.

Most of our anticipated desire fulfilments are the same way. We long for. We get. We move on to the next thing. The new car will soon become the car. The new wardrobe will quickly become “nothing to wear.” The steak will turn to meat. The vacation will become a fading memory, the itchy healing of the sunburn, and monthly payments to our credit card company.

I have discovered that retirement did not follow that “back to the humdrum.” For me, retirement was increasingly anticipated, and from the moment of fulfillment, the experience just started getting better and better. Retirement was worth the labor of preparing and the deferred anticipation of possessing. I have found my life purpose, my calling; retirement!

The subsequent immense anticipation for my life is heaven. My confident expectation and glorious anticipation are that my arrival in heaven will be more like retirement than Christmas morning. I don’t know if anticipation will exist in an environment with no sense of time. However, I anticipate heaven to be one great discovery of the person of God flowing from the current discovery. I don’t know if joy will “increase” in heaven, but I am confident it will not diminish a “jot or a tittle” (Matthew 5:18 KJV).

The new existence will never lose its “new car smell.” We will never feel stuffed after eating and, at the same time, always have a hunger for the next meal at His table.

There is much to examine when we ponder anticipation. One caution I remind myself of is clearly seen in the thinking of Jesus’ contemporaries. The Hebrews of Jesus day were in great anticipation of the coming of the Messiah. For centuries they watched and waited for their rescuer, their deliverer, to come, but he did not. And when he finally showed up, very few recognized him. So, we might say they had the right desire but the wrong vision. Where there is a clear and accurate vision of what is coming, there will be accompanying proportional anticipation of the fulfillment.

If we look for it and accept it, wisdom is here to guide our anticipations. God working out His plan of fulfillment in and around our lives. The more clearly you see those promises of God, the more accurate and intense our anticipation will be. Not to know His promises is to anticipate what we want from God instead of what God has planned to give. We are challenged to learn to anticipate the presence of God over the performance of God.

Our God is great. And He demonstrates His greatness in the actions of His love. So, learn to enjoy this time of anticipation between your longing and the fulfillment. That is, at least, part of the reason for his apparent delay in action.

For the vision is yet for the appointed [future] time

It hurries toward the goal [of fulfillment]; it will not fail.

Even though it delays, wait [patiently] for it,

Because it will certainly come; it will not delay.

Habakkuk 2:3 Amplified Version

P.S. By the time I finished the first draft of this post, my cherry jam anticipation was realized; the jar is now spotless.