When the Rod Breaks

If you are reading this on the app or website, you’ll notice the picture. It’s a really old photo of me as a little boy fishing with my dad and my sisters. They all caught a bunch of fish. Me? My fishing rod broke. As you can probably tell from the look on my face, I was not impressed. I didn’t think it was fair. I had expected to catch fish just like everyone else. Instead, I was standing there holding a broken rod and a broken expectation.

Life has a way of doing that to us. We set our expectations on how things should go — how our plans should unfold, how our efforts should be rewarded, how our prayers should be answered. Then something breaks. A door closes. A relationship strains. A prayer seems unanswered. And disappointment settles in.

Disappointment itself is not sin — but what we do with it matters deeply. If we allow disappointment to define God’s character, we can slowly drift from Him. We begin to think, “This isn’t fair.” We compare our lives to others who seem to be “catching fish” while we stand empty-handed. Over time, disappointment can harden into discouragement, and discouragement into distance from God.

But Scripture reminds us that hope may be deferred, yet God is never absent. Our broken expectations do not mean God’s purposes are broken. Sometimes He allows the rod to break so we learn that our joy was never meant to rest in the catch — but in His presence.