Life in God
An unmarried woman or a virgin concerns herself with the Lord’s work, because she wants to be dedicated both in body and spirit; but a married woman concerns herself with worldly matters, because she wants to please her husband.
I am saying this because I want to help you. I am not trying to put restrictions on you. Instead, I want you to do what is right and proper, and to give yourselves completely to the Lord’s service without any reservation. (verses 34b, 35)
What’s important here isn’t whether a person is married or single but, rather, that we live our lives totally in the context of our relationship with God. It’s about seeing all we do as done in God’s service.
Paul believed it was easier for a single person to be ‘dedicated both in body and spirit’; he or she had less of the everyday family concerns of the married person.
The danger for people with families is not that their marriage and family can distract them from their ‘Father ‘s business’. Loving and pleasing one’s partner, or loving and nurturing one’s children, is very much our ‘ Father’s business’. The danger is that anxieties of family life may deflect us from the reality that, as Christians, everything we do is a matter ofliving ‘in Christ’; we cannot separate life into compartments marked ‘ God’s’ and ‘ ours’. Married or single, we need to remember that God doesn’t want to be first in our lives, or the centre of our lives. He wants to be our life; nothing we do is outside of our relationship with him.
Be my life, Lord, so that it truly is consecrated to your service. Amen.
by Bob Turnbull, in ‘New Strength for each Day’ (LCA, Openbook, 1998)
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