Yawn...

What a boring NCAA Men's Basketball Championship game it was last night. As exciting as the tourney had been up until the Final Four, I had great hopes that this would be one of the best, if not the best, tournament of all time (at least all of my time). But the Final Four was a big dud. Neither of the semifinal games was close, nor was the championship. And the tourney had such promise, too. We had upsets, like Northwestern State over Iowa on a last-second shot; like Montana over Nevada; like Bradley over Kansas (yes, Kansas choked in the first round - again!). We had amazing finishes like UCLA over Gonzaga and Texas over West Virginia (Cursed Texas!). And we had the Cinderella #11 seed George Mason make it all the way to the Final Four, the first time in history that a team seeded that low ever made it that far. It had all the makings for the best tourney ever, but at the end, it laid a great big egg.

It makes me think about what we discussed at youth group the last couple of weeks. Sometimes, Christianity is the same way. In our eyes, it can lay a great big egg, too. But it's not because it's bad. I'm sure Florida doesn't think that the tournament was bad in any way. It is because we have the wrong expectations for it. We expect to be happy all of the time. Or we expect it to be about living a moral life. Or we expect God to show up in some big, dramatic burning bush experience for us daily. Whatever it is, we often expect the wrong things about what it means to follow Jesus, and it ends up being a drag to us. Has this ever happened to you?