We often face disappointments in our lives.  It is easy for us to get caught up in the fantasy of what we think is supposed to happen in our lives.  Perhaps we get caught up in plans to attend a certain college or university and we project our future around what opportunities are going to be available to us after we finish studying at this university but then we fail to get accepted at the university and everything that we planned seems to come crashing down around us.  Perhaps we have invested ourselves in a particular relationship and we are certain that the person that we are in a relationship with holds the secrets to a future of happiness and fulfillment but then the relationship does not work out for us and we are left feeling lost and alone.  Perhaps we are applying for a certain job and we can see ourselves enjoying a long and satisfying career in this place of employment but we find out that we are not going to be hired.  Perhaps we are investing in some new start up or some investment fund that is going to make us lots of money and we can see ourselves living a comfortable life of wealth and luxury but the investments all go belly up and we lose our investment capital and now must struggle to make ends meet.  Perhaps we have spent a lot of time and energy working on a certain sport and we are sure that we will get to the pros and make the big paycheck but an injury prevents us from ever competing on the big stage.  There are many things that we can place our faith and hope in that will eventually disappoint us.  Today Peter gives us the remedy for all of these disappointments in life:  place your faith and hope in God. 

     In Luke’s gospel account of the road to Emmaus, we meet two of the disciples of Jesus who are walking away from their discipleship, disappointed and downcast.  They are discussing along the way home what they had expected to see happen in Jerusalem and how they had been misled and frustrated by the events of the crucifixion and death of Jesus.  Even though they had heard rumors of the encounter with the Risen Christ that some of the disciples had experienced, they did not understand what this could possibly mean for them.  This is not what they had expected to happen when they had begun their journey of discipleship.  They had placed their faith and hope in their own understanding of things and now they were lost, dejected and disillusioned.  Obviously they had expected things to work out differently for themselves and they had placed their faith and hope in their own understanding of who Jesus was.  “But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel…”  Being caught up in their own understanding of what they had thought that salvation would mean for them they failed to see how God had accomplished the work of redemption in the self-sacrifice of love that Jesus had accomplished on the cross.  “Oh, how foolish you are!” Jesus proclaims to them.

     How foolish we are to place our faith and hope in the things of this world and in our own understanding of the events of our lives.  We are foolish to think that God will play by our rules and fulfill our expectations of him.  God’s plans are not our plans.  God’s ways are not our ways.  God’s thinking is not our way of thinking.  God has planned something so much better than our own plans and schemes.  If we could just let go of our expectations and our disappointments, our “futile conduct,”  then we could see the way in which God is manifesting his glory, fulfilling his promises and accomplishing the work of salvation and redemption in the suffering Christ and his sacrifice of love.      To place our faith and hope in God means to listen to his Word as he has revealed it through the prophets and to trust in him to fulfill his plan of salvation and accomplish the work that he has sent his  Son, the Eternal Word, to do.  God won’t quit on us and we should never quit on him.  God has made a decision to love us even when we have sinned and been unfaithful to the covenant we have made with him.  We should make a decision to love him, even when we don’t understand what he is doing in our lives.  The simple prayer that we offer to the Father, “Thy will be done,” can see us through our disappointments and disillusionments and help us to trust in his providential love for us.  Only then will we recognize his abiding presence with us and walk beside him with hearts that are burning with love