When a fifteen-year-old tennis player ends up on center court at Wimbledon, she commands a fervor of respectful energy from the spectators in the stadium and on the screens in our dens. They can no longer just be spectators, because their hopes and dreams are pinned to this courageous would-be champion. Their expectations become the magic force of momentum felt by the young lady in tennis attire at the center of the world’s best venue.
That’s simply a snapshot of just how great expectations can be harnessed as a form of energy felt round the world. Some might call it “synergy” which Mr. Webster defines as the benefit that results when two or more agents work together to achieve something either one couldn’t have achieved on its own. It’s the concept of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.
When I used to work for a living, I was hired to be a wordsmith of good news. Some referred to us as preachers of the word. For me, the most powerful force that kept me honed to the task of being honest to the pulpit was the realization that those in the pews that morning were half of the equation of the sermon. Early on and throughout my career, I was blessed by congregations who expected me to give them the very best I had to offer. Which meant creating the sermon, practicing it, rewriting and practicing until you would rise to their expectations. Week in and week out. Even if we disagreed on what I might have said, we always honored and respected each other as part of the Sunday morning equation where the whole experience was greater than the sum of its parts. And I had promised God and them that I would use all the “energy, intelligence, imagination and love” in doing my task. By the way, the “energy” for the pulpit came more from the pew side of the equation.
Even the ghosts of those dearly departed would haunt me to do my part of this endeavor as I had vowed to do. And I didn’t want to mess with their sacred memories because their expectations of us all did not necessarily die with them. They had pinned their eternal hopes on the likes of us to keep this little church going strong ’til kingdom come.
While this concept applies to the corporate community, this same energetic creativity works within individuals. It is the old Pygmalion principle that brought life to the breathless statue, and it continues to breathe life into every person who is loved for the promise they show, no matter how low they may be or feel. In the musical “My Fair Lady”, Eliza Doolittle is transformed by the belief of Henry Higgins. In the down-trodden flower peddler of Convent Garden, he saw the promise of something more. He staked his bet on that possibility he saw in her, and she won.
If you listen carefully, you can hear the same thing going on in the Bible. It is not so intent on getting people to believe in God or to trust in Jesus as it is in declaring that God believes in us. God sees something promising about us. More than a story of the faith of God’s people, the Bible is a story of God’s faith in all of us.
Our money is a form of energy. It represents our work and the energy we invested in that job. Whether we admit it or not, God also has some skin in that game, unless you believe you are a self-made person who accomplished everything by yourself, including the creation itself with all that infrastructure. The synergistic equation of all of this might require that we reprint our dollars to say “God Trusts in Us”. And that affirmation of faith might give us all the courage we need to make this world a heavenly court made for champions of love who serve nothing less than the very finest to all God’s people because God, our divine audience, has great expectations for us all.
Our money is a form of energy. It represents our work and the energy we invested in that job. Whether we admit it or not, God also has some skin in that game, unless you believe you are a self-made person who accomplished everything by yourself, including the creation itself with all that infrastructure. The synergistic equation of all of this might require that we reprint our dollars to say “God Trusts in Us”. And that affirmation of faith might give us all the courage we need to make this world a heavenly court made for champions of love who serve nothing less than the very finest to all God’s people because God, our divine audience, has great expectations for us all.
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