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Prairie Bluffs Mission Center

Prairie Bluffs Mission Center is a fellowship of 21 Community of Christ congregations serving Western Iowa and Eastern Nebraska. Community of Christ is an international community of faith where all are welcome. We proclaim Jesus Christ and promote communities of joy, hope, love, and peace.

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Note from Noel – April 2025

As a Minnesota Vikings fan, I like to say I’ve earned a PhD in disappointment. Year after year… season after season… since the mid-1970s… I’ve endured the crushing agony of every season ending without a Super Bowl victory. And yet—somehow—every fall, when the leaves turn and the football pads start to crack, hope stirs again. A new season. A clean slate. And I think, “Maybe this is the year.”

Sometimes disappointment is light and fleeting—your team loses a big game, the coffee shop is out of your favorite flavor, or your car breaks down. But other times, disappointment cuts much deeper: a relationship ends, the job you poured your heart and soul into slips away, finances unravel, someone you trust lets you down, or you face a health crisis or loss that shakes you to your spiritual core. Disappointment is an inevitable part of life.

If I’m being honest, I tend to sit in disappointment and self-pity longer than I should. I recall a time years ago, after a church talent show performance—when I dressed up as a “Soggy Bottom Boy”, long beard and all, and sang the song “Man of Constant Sorrow” from the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou. Afterward, my mother-in-law quipped, “Noel, you really are a man of constant sorrow.” She was joking… mostly, I think—I hope… My Grandma Esther Sherer tried keep me grounded. I recall a time I was jokingly lamenting some “poor me” or “woe is me” scenario, Grandma rubbed her thumb and forefinger together and asked, “Do you know what this is?” I shook my head indicating, no. She laughed, “Well, this the world’s tiniest violin playing for you.” Ouch, that hurt – but not really – it was funny.

We can laugh at the little letdowns, but let’s be clear: some disappointments in life are no laughing matter. Some shake us so deeply that we wonder if we’ll ever feel whole again. Alison and I have lived through that kind of sorrow. Years ago, after several miscarriages, we lost a child seven months into a pregnancy. It was a heartbreaking season in our lives. Grief overwhelmed us—and so did guilt. We already had one beautiful child, our daughter Melissa. Shouldn’t we just feel grateful? When we finally sat with a counselor, and expressed the guilt part of this sentiment, his response was gentle and wise: “Some of the hardest losses in life are the ones where we mourn what could have been.”

Disappointment isn’t always about what we’ve lost—it’s often about the life we imagined, the future we hoped for. The job. The child. The relationship. The health. The dream. When those hopes are dashed, we can feel adrift. And yes, even people of deep faith feel that sorrow. But here’s the good news: God’s love and blessings are often found in our valleys of disappointment.

The first verses and chorus from an old Gaither song has been stuck in my head this week:

They all walked away, nothing to say, they’d just lost their dearest friend. All that He said, now He was dead, so this was the way it would end. The dreams they had dreamed, were not what they seemed, now that he was dead and gone. The garden, the jail, the hammer, the nail. How could a night be so long?

Then came the morning, night turned into day, the stone was rolled away, hope rose with the dawn. Then came the morning, shadows vanished before the sun, death had lost, and life had won, for morning had come.

This song captures the weight of that first Easter weekend—the heartbreak, the silence, the feeling that it was all over. But then… the sun rose. The stone rolled. And hope was renewed. That’s the beauty of Easter. It reminds us that even when everything feels lost, God’s not finished. Even when the night feels long, morning still comes. And with it—new life, fresh hope, and the promise that love always has the last word.

When we’re walking through our times of disappointment, let us remember: We are not alone. Our feelings are valid. And even when life doesn’t turn out the way we hoped, God is still at work—in us, around us, and sometimes in ways we can’t yet see. This Easter, I pray you find strength in your sorrow, grace in your grief, and a fierce and quiet hope that whispers, “The best is yet to come.”

Just as spring breaks the cold and darkness of winter, so too does the resurrection break into our lives with beauty, hope, and new life in Christ.

Live in that hope. Happy Easter!

Noel



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