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Singleness
Resource
- D. Stuart Briscoe, What it Means to be Real, (Word Publishing, England; 1988), Chapter 7, “Are Real Singles Complete People?,” pp. 91ff
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The Man Never Came
Elisabeth Elliot tells of Gladys Aylward, a London parlour maid, who went to China as a missionary. She spent seven years there, single, happy. Then an English couple came to work nearby. She saw what she’d been missing out on. So she prayed that God would choose a man in England, call him, send him out to China and have him propose.
“I believe God answers prayer. He called him, but he never came.”
Urbana 1976
Quotes
- At a party: “I like being single. I’m always there when I need me.” - Art Leo, quoted by Ron Hudspeth in Atlanta Journal
- There is only one thing harder than living alone, and that is to live with another person. - Ingrid Trobisch
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His Commands are His Enablings
Single through no fault or choice of my own, I am unable to express my sexuality in the beauty and intimacy of Christian marriage, as God intended...To seek to do this outside of marriage is, by the clear teaching of Scripture, to sin against God and my own nature. I have no alternative but to live a life of voluntary celibacy...chaste not only in body, but in mind and spirit...I want to go on record as having proved that for those who are committed to do God’s will, His commands are His enablings.
Margaret Clarkson in Homemade, Dec. 1989
Demographers Predict
Demographers predict that 10% of young men and women today will never marry, and that half of those who do will divorce. Some 37% of adults over 18 are single, and roughly one-fourth of all households consist of just one person. Moreover, one child in four is born out of wedlock, and one-fourth of all children now live with a single parent. Are these changes in American living patterns affecting the nation’s health? Health experts have long observed that married people are healthier than unmarried people, and that death rates (from all causes) are consistently higher among single and socially isolated people. More recent studies have suggested that mortality rates are about 100% to 300% higher for socially isolated men, and 50% to 150% higher for socially isolated women, than for their socially integrated counterparts.
Resource, Mar./Apr., 1990
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