An unwanted gift?

You will probably have heard this testimony many times, you may even have told it - apologies if you have. It goes, "I used to struggle with singleness a lot but I came to a point where I was really content and trusting God with it and that was when so and so came along and now I'm happily married with 10 children".

I have exaggerated it slightly but I can't count the number of times I heard a version of that story when I was in my 20s. I have two major problems with this story. The first is that it seems to hold out marriage as some sort of prize for sorting yourself out with God when it comes to singleness. Just get yourself in a place where you are content and God will give you what you really want. It's a recipe for self-deception or despair. And it doesn't seem to me to be accurate to life. I know loads of people who idolise marriage and/or struggled with singleness deeply up until the very moment they met their husband-to-be. I also know many who seem entirely at peace with their singleness who remain resolutely unwed. The second reason I dislike it is that it frankly seems smug, however it is intended. I am all sorted and have earned my married bliss, your singleness is really all your fault - be more holy and you'll get what you want.

I know it is meant as an encouragement to people to focus on contentment in the Lord but I honestly don't think its a useful way of doing it. It seems cruel in some ways, which God never is - here is a challenge, stop wanting what you want and maybe I will give it to you. There is a truth behind it, God in his kindness often withholds things we want that are bad for us because we want them in idolatrous ways but God's desire in withholding an idol is that we learn to want God more, not to squash our desires down in the hope God will think we have them under control enough to give us a husband.

I actually rarely hear this these days, as I grow older. Mostly I think because a couple of years into marriage most people start to realise they are not as sorted as they would like to think. The old idolatries are often still there below the surface once reality hits and marriage is tough and tiring, it no longer seems like something to brag about so much. These people are more likely to tell you how hard marriage is in response to your singleness angst - sorry guys, equally unhelpful to the struggling single.

So what is the answer to helping singles in their hurt. First you can recognise that there is a pain in feeling unchosen and unwanted. The best thing you can do for your single friends is to love them and welcome them into your home. I have been so incredibly blessed by married friends who have included me as part of their family. Where life doesn't stop when I come round, we play together with the children, join in bath and bedtime routines, muck in and help around the house. An hour at the house of a friend like this is worth a million words of encouragement. The second thing is to point them relentlessly to the God who has chosen them and wanted them. Who chose them before the creation of the world, who chose them to be his dearly loved children, who chose them as his bride, who chose them for blessing.

And the God who numbers their days and the hairs on their heads, who has good plans, whatever they may be. For me this was the final hurdle of contentment with singleness. I realised that the fact that I was single wasn't due to any personal lack in me, an inadequacy or unattractiveness, but because God had chosen it for my good. That took away the last sting of bitterness in singleness and set me free to enjoy all that it gives me.

Which brings me to the reason for my post. I love my singleness. I love the freedom it gives me to serve God, to love my friends, to have time for people, to do the job I love. I love the fact I don't have to negotiate the details of daily life with someone else in time-consuming compromises. I love the fact that if God was to say tomorrow, get up and leave Oxford and go here, I could just do it. No worries about jobs or schools or houses. Which gives God the possibility of doing just that. How exciting. So having reached a point where I not only don't fear singleness, but enjoy it how should I approach the possibility of being asked to surrender it?

At the moment this is still a hypothetical question but one which circumstances have pushed me to ask. And the answer is surprising. I am beginning to wonder if the purpose for which God has been preparing me by dealing with my difficulties with singleness is not marriage - but here's a controversial thought - singleness itself. Do I move from a place where I answer the relationship question with 'of course I would love a family if it is God's will for me,' to 'I feel I am right where God wants me to be in my life right now and I'm really not looking to change that.' In some senses it doesn't matter of course except that it affects how I treat men who seem to be interested in me. Many, many people have and would urge me to make the most of every opportunity to show a man I like I am interested in him, to accept someone who offers as long as I like him and he loves Jesus, to not close the door on opportunities, as if my aim was to find 'the man'. But I am in a place where I am not sure I want 'the man' at all. I certainly don't need a man to tell me who I am or my value, and I am not sure a husband would make me more fruitful in the ministry I feel called to, in fact I'm pretty sure it would make me less.

Even as I write this there is that nagging question at the back of my mind - are you a lunatic? Are you really saying that the world - including the Christian world - is wrong when they pity the single and strive after marriage? Are you really saying that you can choose singleness and childlessness with all its consequences later in life? Are you sure that the conviction today that you are where God wants you will feel quite such a good basis for making this decision in 30 years time? Those doubts are there but so is the fierce love of where God has me and what I am doing for his kingdom now. Things I wouldn't be able to do if I take the path of marriage. And the conviction that I don't need to be afraid. God has loved and chosen me and in heaven I will experience that so fully that missing out on the marriage experience here on earth with seem absolutely weightless compared with the satisfaction of having lived obediently and in dependence on him.

I don't know for sure which way this will go. God may bring someone along and make it absolutely clear that I should change my mind and marry them, and that I can be fruitful in that marriage in a way that I can't now as a single and that he wants me to be. But for the moment I am looking straight down the barrel of the possibility that the story I started this post with can have another ending, and that maybe for the sake of the church, a few of us should choose that ending, "I used to struggle with singleness a lot but I came to a point where I was really content and trusting God with it and now I am perfectly and peacefully content with my singleness and thank God for it and the opportunities it gives me and wouldn't want it to change."

Now you see me

Hagar was a woman and a slave. She was no saint in the ordinary, everyday sense, not above a bit of unattractive gloating, but in many ways she was a victim of her situation. She was trapped in circumstances of life far from her choosing, enslaved, forced to sleep with the husband of her mistress and then driven out into the desert by her mistress's jealousy, pregnant and alone.

Hagar was powerless to change her situation, she had no control, even over her own body. She was at the mercy of the whims of others, treated as a possession and as if she herself possessed no dignity or worth. People didn't look at Hagar, they looked through her, to the people who mattered. She was unloved, unvalued, an object to be used to fulfill the wishes of others and then to be discarded when she was no longer wanted or needed. And to a certain extent she was her own worst enemy provoking her mistress to rage by despising her infertility in spite knowing all the pain and shame and humiliation that entailed.

Hagar's story is extreme but in it I do see faint echoes of my own. I may not know what it is to be a slave, but I do know something of what it feels like to be trapped by circumstances and powerless to change them. I know something of what it feels like to be at the mercy of others and treated without compassion or dignity. I know something of what it feels like to be discarded and rejected. I certainly know what it is like to suspect my own unpleasant, ugly sin means I probably deserved most of what I got. I guess most of us do, some a little more than others. 

But as it is so common to find in the stories of God's people, Hagar's story comes with a twist in the tail. She did not die in the desert, instead she discovered there that she was not alone. There was one there who did not see her as a possession, who looked at her, not through her. There was one there who saw her dignity and her value as a person made in the image of God, to whom she was not a worthless object to be used and discarded. There was one there to whom she mattered and by whom although she may have been powerless, she was not unheard. 

The Lord came to Hagar and said to her, however others have treated you, however little you have been valued, I, the Lord, hear you and I, the Lord, see you. And Hagar, the woman, the slave, the sinner, the oppressed, the alone, was the first person in the Bible to give God a name. 

She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” (Genesis 16:13)

Names for God describe a part of his character, Hagar had indeed seen God as she was privileged to give him a name to reveal part of his character to the world. That name was 'the God who sees me.' God sees me. That is his name, a fundamental part of who he is, so it can't and won't change. Whoever else has failed to see who I am, God has not. Whoever else has tried to tell me I have nothing of worth to offer, God does not. Others will get me wrong, will underestimate me, overestimate me, misunderstand me, look through me to the people who matter, but not God. He sees me. 

And like Hagar this seeing means blessing too. God did not merely restore to Hagar the worth and dignity she had as a human made in his image. He never does stop there, his heart is too full of love, his hand too generously full of gifts. He gave to Hagar the gift of the honour of being the mother of a great nation, a nation that would not be crushed or despised as she had been. To us of course he gives a much more precious gift the gift of the honour of being his child, found in Christ, the honour of being his beloved, clothed in Christ's beautiful righteousness, the honour of being his ambassadors to declare his name upon the earth. 

There is a cry of pain from my heart that says, "Why does nobody ever see me?" It's less a reality than it used to be but the wound is still there barely scabbed over and vulnerable to break open once again when knocked about by circumstance. The damage of the past is too deep to placate that cry with reassurances that things are different now, that there are people who do hear and do see. But there is an inexpressible comfort in this, which was true in the past, is true now and will always be true: "You are the God who sees me".