Celebrations, Pity Parties, and a God who Attends Both

By: JANA GREENE

If it’s God’s will, it will come easily. That’s how you know you’re operating in the Spirit. Things will click. Things will flow. His yoke is light, etc and so on.

But also, if you are in God’s will, it will be hard.

You’ll know you have holy favor when you’re downtrodden and at the end of your rope. That’s the ol’ devil, don’t you know. And he wouldn’t mess with you if you weren’t doing God’s work.

Well, which is it? Do you see the conundrum?

This is life, and it’s both and neither. It is, so far as I can tell, it’s ALLTHETHINGS, dammit.

I can’t trust a God whose mind I have to pick apart to get it “right.”

I don’t tell my adult children, “Okay, I’m feeling some type of way about you…but WHICH way? Let’s see if you can correctly guess based on interpretation of an ancient text and my jealous, vengeful nature. May the odds be ever in your favor!”

I learn alongside my children, you see. For everything I learn about them, they learn about me. And in the process, and I feel like we are all learning alongside God, with curiosity and wonder and grieving and suffering.

It will be easy, there will be times of flow.

It will be brutally difficult.

It’s all holy favor, you see, and that’s the confounding part.

God only feels ONE type of way about you.

We need not wring our hands in an attempt to earn love, because that’s the way we have been taught to please a world of broken people and an unpleasable diety.

In actuality, the odds are always, always in your favor, Beloved. Even (especially?) when you’re most hurt, downtrodden, and at the end of your rope.

Whether you invite God to a celebration of the soul or an old-fashioned pity party, just invite him. The Spirit shows up for both.

How to be in the will of God? Just be.

Blessings, friends.