Trust is the lesson

Singleness is many things. But it's worth stating that for many it is a form of suffering... Real suffering. Don't feel condemned for finding it hard, even if it feels like you're the only one, and everyone else is 'content' and 'sorted.'

Jesus calls us to know him through sharing in the fellowship of his suffering. That is huge. And if you're single and that's painful, I'd like to suggest that that is the reason why: Jesus has called you to share in his sufferings. It's really emphatically NOT because of any other reason - dress size, personality, how successful you are at "putting yourself out there."

You can rest in that knowledge.

My singleness series keeps being hijacked by Elisabeth Eliot but I don't mind. She knows what she's talking about:


"I have become convinced that nothing in God's whole world has the power to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus my Lord."

"Nothing Paul? What about death?"

"No, not death."

"Life?"

"No, not life."

"Messenger of Heaven..? Monarch on Earth?"

"Not even a monarch on Earth."

"What happens today?"

"Nope."

"Tomorrow? .... A power from on high?"

"No power from on high."

"From below?"

"No power from below."

"Anything else in God's whole world?"

"Nothing whatsoever. Absolutely nothing."

"Paul, I think you forgot something..."

"Did I?"

"My love life. Matters of the heart. I'll take the floggings and the shipwrecks and the persecution. Those are the things that people are supposed to bear for Christ. But what if the woman I love turns me down? What if the man I've got my eye on doesn't even look at me? What if I'm rejected...?"

"Oh, I never thought of that...."

(Maybe Paul would) have had to have said "Nor anything else, except my passions, my poor broken heart, my miserable luck in my love life has any power to separate me from the love of God...

- "It's no use trying to measure suffering. What matters is making the right use of it, taking advantage of the sense of helplessness it brings to turn to one's thoughts to God. Trust is the lesson."

Elisabeth Eliot, Passion and Purity (1984)


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