The First Thing First
A Reflection on Living in God’s Favor
Not too long ago, a young woman came to see me in my office—the way folks sometimes wander in when they’ve got a question they think might sound silly (but isn’t). She sat down, folded her hands, and said, “I want to have a spiritual experience. Like a real one. What should I ask God for?”
Now, I love questions like this because they’re honest and real and hungry. She’d heard me say (probably too many times) that God hears our prayers—that God can handle our hopes, our wild requests, even the messier stuff we’re scared to say out loud. And of course, she had that verse ready: “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).
But what I heard beneath her words wasn’t really about how to get a spiritual experience. It was a quieter question: Does God really know me? Like, love me as I am? Not just in the polite, “Jesus-loves-everybody” kind of way, but in the deep, personal, sees-my-soul kind of way. And if God does, how can I learn to trust that?
I’ll admit it: sometimes I get tired of saying “God loves you unconditionally.” Not because it’s untrue, but because it’s so familiar—and it gives me zero dopamine in my ADHD brain to repeat the same phrase over and over again (this is why I was terrible at sales in my previous life, by the way, but I digress...).
We hear it and we say it, but we forget how utterly foundational it is to the rest of Christianity. Nothing can happen until we grasp the fact of God’s unconditional love. It’s like the paper everything else is written on. Without it, theology, worship, prayer—they all get a little flat and gray. But when the love of God is real to you—felt, not just recited—then everything lights up in full color. Everything else makes sense only in light of it.
Scripture makes that clear. Paul doesn’t say God started loving you when you got your act together. No, he says: “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Grace isn’t God being nice when we deserve it—it’s God being who God is, always and forever, regardless of us.
God’s favor isn’t a bonus we earn. It’s the starting point. Before the world turned, before your first breath, God looked at you and said, “Yes.” As Ephesians 1:4 says, “He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.” That’s not just theological poetry—it’s the truth. You’ve never been unloved, and there is nothing you can do to ruin it or to earn more of it. You are unconditionally loved.
If I could rewrite the opening sentences of the liturgy—or perhaps just shift the mood of Sunday mornings—I’d want it to begin there: with favor, with joy, with the brilliant absurdity that God delights in you. Because once you know that—once you feel it—peace follows like a shadow. Joy starts to bubble up where anxiety used to camp out. And everything that follows takes on a new appearance and new meaning.
Even the sacraments look different when you start from love. They’re not rituals we perform to get holy. They’re gifts we receive to remember that we already are. Baptism isn’t a box to check—it’s a splash of divine affection and favor--God claimed you as his own! Eucharist isn’t just a wafer and wine—it’s the table God sets because he wants to be near to you-- intimate and vulnerable like lovers on a date or the closest of friends fellowshipping and laughing together. As the old Anglican definition says, a sacrament is “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” Translation: it’s all grace. It’s always been grace. Grace is God’s favor for you, bubbling forth from his immense love for you.
Several weeks after our chat, that young woman sent me an email. She said she didn’t remember the theological details (surprise, surprise), but she remembered that one thing: she is God’s beloved. And that changed everything.
She told me that now, when she prays, it’s like talking to her grandfather—the one who told her stories and held her hand during hard goodbyes. She said, “Now I feel safe with God. Like I belong before I even begin. So I can cut out all the convincing and just ask God like I used to ask my Grandpa for a bedtime story. And I imagine God’s eyes lighting up with a smile—just like my Grandpa’s.”
That’s it, friends. That’s the whole thing. The work of salvation isn’t earning approval. It’s awakening to love. It’s shedding the old myth that we must be “good enough” to matter and stepping into the truth that we already matter—because God says so.
As Paul reminds us in Titus 3:5, “He saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy.” And mercy, grace, favor—all those Sunday school words? They’re just synonyms for love. Fierce, unshakable love.
So if you remember nothing else I’ve preached or penned or pontificated on, remember this: God loves you. God favors you. God is for you. And from that first truth, all other truths are built.
Start there. Stay there. Everything else follows.
Pax et Bonum!
Fr. Ben +
