Very few people, if any, get through life without facing disappointments. Something we have planned or for which we have labored eludes our grasp. A cherished possession is taken away. If we do not learn to handle life’s disappointments in a constructive way we will find it extremely easy to become bitter.
How do you handle the disappointments that come your way? I have often said to persons dealing with unexpected difficulties, “If you will trust God, your disappointment can become His appointment.” This doesn’t mean that in the face of difficulties you should piously fold your hands and say, “This is the will of God, and I must bear it.” It is even possible that your disappointment is the will of God for your life. It could be the only way He could get your attention.
The Apostle Paul tells us how he handled his disappointments, “. . . and having done all, to stand” (Ephesians 6:13). He doesn’t say, “And having done all, give up and quit.” He says, “Stand!” This calls for deliberate and continued action on our part. Sometimes we are traveling in one direction, and God wants us to go in another direction. We need to know that when God changes our direction, there will always be an open road before us.
Several years ago a boy who lived in Decatur, Illinois was deeply interested in photography. He carefully saved his money to buy a certain book on photography and he happily ordered it. The publisher, however, made a mistake in his order and sent a book on ventriloquism instead. The boy was not interested in ventriloquism. He didn’t know he could send the book back and perhaps did not have the money for postage. He could have put the book aside and nursed his disappointment. Instead, he opened the book and began reading, and he became interested. He learned how to throw his voice and eventually got a wooden dummy which he named Charlie McCarthy. Out of his disappointment, Edgar Bergen built a great career.
Victor Hugo, at the age of forty-eight, was banished to the island of Guernsey to live for twenty years in lonely exile. It was, of course, a bitter disappointment – but it was there that he wrote Les Miserables, one of the greatest novels of all time. Without the disappointment, his best work would never have been written. Where does accident end and God’s providence begin? Who can tell?
Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, “Whenever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you . . .” (Romans 15:24). To go to Spain was his dream and his plan. It would have been a challenging adventure that would have filled his heart with joy. Instead of experiencing the glory of conquest for Christ in Spain, he landed in a dirty prison cell in Rome and beyond that – execution and death.
Paul might have cursed his fate, raved against the other prisoners and his captors, and become bitter and rebellious. Or he might have said, “I have done my best but my path was blocked, so I will surrender to the will of God and sit here and complain.” However, he took another course. He turned to God and in so doing he transformed and glorified his imprisonment and wrote triumphantly these words: “I, Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ . . .” (Ephesians 3:1). And later he wrote: “I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel.” (Philippians 1:12). In that prison cell Paul wrote some of his finest epistles.
Perhaps you, like Paul, have failed to reach a cherished goal and are currently in the dark prison cell of disappointment. If so, why not turn in God’s direction? Your disappointment can become His appointment.
The Paper Pulpit 
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