I remember when my daughters were in preschool, I would sometimes drop them off. As I expected, they would run into their classroom, eager to see their teachers and classmates. I would sometimes watch as other children wept, clinging to their mothers, not wanting to go to school. I often thought that my children, and these other children, were simply living up to expectations.

It is easy to believe that children sense what their parents expect, and try to live up to these expectations, but does the same apply to adults? Perhaps. All of us are likely to fall back on behaviors from our childhood. If this is true, what does this say about our expectations of the people around us?

Do we expect people to treat us with respect? Do we expect the people around us to be friendly and act intelligently? Do we expect this, even if they come from different groups than us, if they are of a different race, religion, or socioeconomic stratum?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently in terms of my recent blog posts about ‘The Face of God’. Do we expect those around us to exhibit godliness? What might happen if we tried to change our expectations?

It is easy to take this down the path of prosperity preachers and the law of attraction. If we expect to be blessed, we may attract prosperity. Yet I have real problems with the way a lot of people seem to approach this. To many people seem to confuse prosperity with wealth and material possessions, and need to remember that the love of money is the root of all evil and that you cannot serve both God and money.

Yet it seems like expecting to see the face of God in the people around us could change our experiences.

Note: I started composing this in the morning. I was going to talk a little bit about hearing Harpeth Rising last night, which was a wonderful experience. Then, everything changed with the shooting in Arizona. I’m posting this as is, and may have more comments later.