Undivided

1 Corinthians 7:8-9 - To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

In 1895 a young Irish woman named Amy Carmichael sailed for India, and she never returned home. Not for a visit, not for a furlough, not once in the fifty-five years she spent there. She learned that in the Hindu temples, little girls were being dedicated to the gods and forced into a life of prostitution, and something in her refused to rest. So she went and got them. She traveled the hot, dusty roads to rescue one child at a time, dyed her own skin with coffee to slip in unnoticed, and gathered the rescued children into a place called the Dohnavur Fellowship. Over the years she rescued more than a thousand. The children all came to know her by one name: Amma. Mother. Amy Carmichael never married, and she never had a child of her own. And she became a mother to more than a thousand.

Amy Carmichael understood something our culture can’t fathom and the church has too often forgotten. It’s the very thing Paul writes in our passage today. “To the unmarried and the widows,” Paul says, “it is good for them to remain single, as I am.” Notice that Paul doesn’t treat singleness as a problem to be solved, or a waiting room before real life begins, or a sad consolation for those who missed out. He commends it. Paul, the greatest missionary who ever lived, was himself single, and he says, in effect, there are days I wish more of you had what I have. And if that seems strange, we need only remember that the most complete and fully human person who ever lived, Jesus himself, never married and lacked nothing at all.

The single person can give God an undivided attention that the married person, rightly, has to split. If you’re married, part of your heart and your hours belong to your spouse and your children, and that is holy and good. But the single believer can pour the whole of themselves into the Lord and his work, undivided. This is a kind of freedom most married people will never have. Amy Carmichael could give India fifty-five unbroken years precisely because there was no husband waiting back home, no family of her own pulling her in a second direction. Her singleness was an open channel, and a thousand rescued children walked through it into a mother's arms.

Now if you’re single and reading this, I know all of this can sound like a tidy speech from someone who doesn’t feel the ache. So let me say this part with tenderness. If you long to be married, that longing is good and God-given, and there’s no shame in it at all. Paul says as much in the next breath: it is better to marry than to burn with unmet desire, and wanting a spouse is nothing to repent of. He refuses to rank the two and he calls them both gifts. But hear this underneath the longing: your life isn’t on hold until marriage comes. You’re not less whole, less useful, or less loved. Your life is happening now, and God has an undivided devotion and a real purpose for you in it, today, exactly as you are.

This is part of what it means to be a Joyful Worshipper, someone whose life, whatever its circumstances, pours itself out in undivided delight toward God. Amy Carmichael once said, “Missionary life is simply a chance to die.” She meant a chance to die to self, to comfort, to the smaller life we would have chosen for ourselves, and to discover that Jesus is worth it. Married or single, that’s the invitation to every one of us: stop waiting for your life to begin, and pour what you have, right now, into the God who is worthy of it. Some of the most fruitful lives the church has ever seen belonged to people the world would have called single and alone. Heaven will call them mothers and fathers of thousands.

Today: If you’re single, do one thing this week that leans into the freedom Paul is talking about, something a married person with young kids couldn’t easily do. Give an evening entirely to prayer. Say yes to the ministry that needs a free Saturday. Pour an unhurried afternoon into a younger believer, a neighbor, or a need in the church. If you’re married, look around at the single people in your church and do the opposite of pitying them: honor one. Invite them to your table this week, or tell one of them, out loud, that you see how their life is spent for God and that it matters.

Prayer: “Lord, whatever my situation today, help me stop waiting and start pouring myself out for You. Free me from measuring my life against anyone else's. You gave me this life on purpose; let me spend it on You. In Jesus name, Amen.”

-PK