God Has A Plan

My church was planning a Retreat this weekend focusing on the Holy Spirit.

I was totally looking forward to this from the very beginning. I blocked the weekend off on my calendar months ago.

Then – between bad weather, the coronavirus pandemic, and other worldly obligations – it turned out I was going to have to attend to other worldly obligations this weekend. I prayed about that and decided to attend the first morning session of the Retreat, but the rest of the weekend was going to need to be spent on my other obligations. I was disappointed but felt that God had guided me to that solution, so knew that it was what needed to be.

Then last night I got word that the Retreat was cancelled.

I was so disappointed. Even though I only would have been able to attend a small part of it, I had been looking forward to it for so long!

I prayed about that mostly just to share with God how disappointed I was, not expecting an answer or for anything to change.

But what changed was me.

By the time I was done praying about it I was okay with it. The insight I received was that God knows about all of this, and He has a plan. He is in charge and I need to trust Him. It’s all good.

Somewhat unusually for me — I “got it.” I’m still a little disappointed, but not upset about it (which would normally be my typical response).

Given how hard it has always been for me to remain calm when upsetting things happen, my first thought was that it was pretty clear that the Holy Spirit was at work here, helping me to be more of a grown-up about dealing with disappointments.

My second thought was, of course, about the irony here.

I didn’t get to attend a Retreat on the Holy Spirit, but I did gratefully accept His guidance in becoming more like the person He expects me to be.

Hmmm. It’s almost as though – y’know – as though God has a Plan or something….