Disappointment

Disappointment comes from anticipating things that don’t happen. Events begin to take place and we anticipate what will happen next. A friend calls up, for example, saying that he’s going to be in town for a few days and would like to get together for a few hours. We look forward to that time, thinking about what we’ll do and the fun we’ll have. Then the day comes and we’re ready to go meet him, but we receive a phone call, “Sorry, I can’t make it, but something came up.” It hurts us when things like this happen.



Things are rarely the way we imagine they will be. Sometimes they are worse, sometimes they are better, but if we aren’t careful disappointment will cloud our judgment of which is which. Because we are so disappointed that we didn’t get what we wanted, we fail to see that what we got is actually better. For the Christian who trusts in the Lord, we can have confidence that though disappointment may come all things will work out for our good.



There are things that we want so much. When we don’t get them we question whether they are things we should be wanting. Maybe we would be better off without them. Maybe they aren’t what we think they are. Maybe…the thing is that we just don’t know. We have to trust the Lord to point us in the right direction and let us know what is right. For all I know, what we want may be something that we wouldn’t want after we got it. It’s hard to know.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: WestBow Press

Image
T oday, I’m writing a book review unlike any I have written before. Actually, I’m going to I’m reviewing two books and I haven’t read either one. As you may recall, some time ago, Thomas Nelson announced that they were entering the vanity press market, using the imprint WestBow Press. The first books out of that arrangement are making their way down the pipeline, two of which you can see here. The first thing I noticed when they arrived was the size of the box. I arrived home and saw the box sitting on my front step. My first thought was that they had only shipped on of them. The box is the same sized box Amazon.com uses to ship individual copies of my novels. I opened it up and found both novels stacked neatly, one on top of the other. Both books have the dimensions 6” x 9”, a fairly standard size for non-traditionally published books. Publishing a book with that dimension simplifies the process when a book will be published both as a paperback and a hardback. One of the books is p...
Read more

Review: Raider Publishing

Image
A few weeks ago, I received a request from someone who had come across the popular Review: Westbow Press post. This reader requested that I look at Raider Publishing . After asking this reader a few questions via e-mail, I learned that she had used them to publish a book and was disgruntled with them. One of her complaints was that Adam Salviani was not responding to her e-mail and he was “unavailable” when she called his office in New York. This was brought on by her concern because she had not received an advance copy of her book and found that it had been published without her being informed. In her e-mail, she stated that she had been in contact with other customers and they had received the same treatment. I did what I normally do when I receive a request like this concerning a company I don’t recognize. I looked for as much third-party information as I could find on the web. Interestingly, I did that search before I realized she was disgruntled and I found relatively little to...
Read more

Is Tate Publishing a Scam?

Image
T oday, I want to take one more look at Tate Publishing and Enterprises LLC. In case you missed Tuesday’s post, Tate Publishing is a subsidy press that focuses on unpublished authors. They charge a $3,990 publicist setup fee, but they do appear to have sufficient staff to justify their claim that they have allocated $27,000 for each book. Today, I want to look less at promises and more at results. In the interest of showing rather than telling, take a look at the video below: One of the services that Tate Publishing provides is that they create fifteen second spots like the one above and run them on cable networks. They promise 80,000 impressions. Or to state it another way, they promise that 80,000 people will see that commercial. Someone from Tate Publishing is welcome to correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe they charge an additional fee for these commercials. The way I would expect this to play out is that each commercial will air one time with about 80,000 people watching. T...
Read more