Behind Infinity

This morning our admittedly well-intentioned pastor included in his congregational prayer a petition which simultaneously amused and aggrivated me. He prayed for single people, asking God to help us in our struggles against loneliness, and that we would not give in to the temptations that plague single people, “temptations, Lord, to pity themselves, and to be covetous.” And he stopped there, which was rather surprising…the way things were going I half I expected him to go on and begin pleading with God to raise up Godly spouses for our poor lonely souls so that our dysfunctional singleness can be remedied and we might go on to live happily married Christiany-Christian lives.

Perhaps I’m just being too sensitive and/or cynical, but whenever pastor or some other joyously married individual says or prays something like that, my mind begins to churn. I start to wonder, do my single pals and I really seem like the bunch of pathetic sad sacks that this prayer makes us out to be? I mean, of course you have to overlook my friend Micah, because we all know that he’s just a fountain of self pity. But for the most part I always do my best to keep from interrupting the wedded bliss of my married brothers and sisters with whining and moaning about how I’m soooooo lonely and wish I had a man in my life to make me not lonely anymore.

Huh?

I appreciate the kindhearted intention behind the poorly-worded prayers. My hunch is that after romping around in the hearts and roses of mawage for a little too long, it may be easy for some people to forget how they ever managed to survive before their beloved honeysweetums entered their life. To them, the prospect of life without their S.O. must seem like a day without sunshine. But I don’t need or want to be pitied or treated like a special case and sometimes it takes a bit of effort not to resent the entirely unintended implication that I must surely be self-pitying, covetous, and drowning in loneliness because I don’t have a significant other. I mean, single people don’t have a monopoly on loneliness–I’ve seen enough marriages to know that having a warm body beside you in bed at night isn’t some sort of magical cure for loneliness (in fact, if you throw in the right combination of emotional distance and communication problems, it can even cause it.)

So then, how should we pray for single people?

At this point in my life, I am (for the most part) actually quite thankful for my singleness and for the benefits and opportunities it affords and while I hope to get married someday (and sometimes may make noise to that effect), I’m really in no rush. I mean, right now I can spend my money however I want, and flirt with whoever I want, and hang out with whoever I want, whenever I want! How’s that for awesome?? But also–and I’m being serious now–two or three evenings a week I am welcomed into the homes of the families whose children I teach Latin and violin and I usually don’t leave until 8:30 or even sometimes 9:30, after a full night of lessons, dinner, and good conversation (not necessarily in that order). I get to be an important part of my students’ lives and minister to them in a way that would likely be impossible if I was needed at home to get dinner on the table and iron my husband’s pants. Teaching in this way is something special that I get to do because I am single, not in spite of it. And conversely, I have little time or opportunity to be lonely or feel sorry for myself when surrounded not only by the love of my family and friends, but also the affection of these students and their parents. In my relationships with these families, the ministry definitely goes two ways.

We thank God for marriage and pray for married people that they might honor God with their marriages. So if we’re making the distinction between married and single in our prayers, let’s thank God for singleness and the particular opportunities it has for ministry within the church and the world, and instead of simply saying, “Help poor, single Brittany not to be lonely, self-pitying, and covetous,” you can pray for single people, that we would be honoring God with our singleness and fulfilling his call for our single lives. Because if we’re doing that well, then there’s going to be no room for loneliness, self-pity, and covetousness.

This morning Loretta and I had an adventure. We went to a pentecostal church.

For those who may not have visited Harvest, my church could probably be construed as “rather conservative”. We follow a liturgy published in the bulletin, wherein we sing hymns out of a hymnbook with a piano and listen to a carefully outlined sermon, which our pastor preaches standing behind a handsome wooden pulpit–none of that newfangled plexiglass nonsense for us, thank you very much.
Loretta’s church is similarly conservative, minus the piano, and replacing the hymnbook with a psalter. So it was with curiosity on my part and not a little trepidation on hers that we agreed to go when our buddy Devin invited us to come see a “raucous pentecostal service” (his words, not mine) at Grand Rapids First.

The service was about what I expected, (Devin had been worried that we’d be blown away by his crazy church) although I was awfully dissapointed in one thing. Devin’s all the time bragging about these faith healings and stuff that go on there, so I was secretly hoping to see something that would cause me to reconsider my views on cessationalism. However I didn’t get to see any paralytics walk or blind people see or amputees grow new limbs or anything. That was really a bummer. But yeah. It was your basic contemporary church service with a fairly good worship band (the drummer was fun to watch) and choir playing your usual “7-11″ worship anthems (seven words sung eleven times). It didn’t matter that I didn’t know any of the songs, because they sung them so many times that by the end of each one, I knew them so well I could have sung with the choir. Also interesting to me was the 5-10 minute “meet and greet” time during the middle of the service. I mean, I’ve been to churches before where you’re told to “turn around and give your neighbor God’s blessing!” but in this church, people actually left their seats to go find their friends. Whoa.

All in all it was enjoyable. I always enjoy the opportunity to visit other churches, because I always learn something new (or at least, I’m reminded of something very important) about God and his church. First of all, today’s visiting gave me a rekindled appreciation for solid exegetical preaching with a discernable, logical outline. The preacher I heard today at Grand Rapids First was a great guy with a dynamic, passionate delivery style. He was great to listen to, and I admire his verve and the enthusiasm with which the message was received by the congregation. I just wish he had been delivering me something more! His entire (fairly long) sermon consisted of what would have been a really great first point or thesis statement. I wanted to go deeper and hear more.

On a related note, I’m really glad Pastor Dale doesn’t feel that he has to hit golf balls into the congregation during his sermon introduction in order to get our attention.

Furthermore, it has caused me to delight even more in the more “traditional” church music. I love, love, love the old-style psalms and hymns of the faith. They’re beautifully and eloquently (though some more than others) packed with so much theological truth, so much recognition of who God is, so much admission of who we are. After singing “Yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord,” I was elated to go back to Harvest tonight and sing “And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood”. We may not have drums or a bass or a really cool black guy at the keyboard, but we have four or more verses that don’t repeat themselves.

Also, I was struck by how the worship service at First seemed like such an “event”. The people were visibly excited about it. The band and choir must have taken quite a bit of time to rehearse for it. The multimedia components (there were many) must have taken quite a long time to prepare. These people are extremely serious about going to worship. In contrast, when I go to church at Harvest, sometimes it feels like, “oh, I’m just going to church”, where we just do this thing every week and go home and it’s just simple and normal and we do it, and whatever. You know. Nothing exciting or anything, just church. I think I need to make sure to remember that while our service is “simple” and “subdued” compared to what I saw today, it’s no less of an event. Meeting the Living God in Worship is ALWAYS an important event, people!

Worshipping away from home will often cause me to appreciate my church more, and I’ve kind of needed that lately. It’s good to be reminded that while we have our issues–like all churches–and there are things I might like to see done differently, we’re a family, and that’s important. And also, worshipping with other believers, especially ones who do things differently from what I’m used to, always gives me a greater appreciation for and feeling of the globalness of the Body of Christ. Our backgrounds, our life experiences, our beliefs about Scripture, and our preferences and convictions regarding worship style may be slight or they may be fairly dichotomous, but we’re still all brothers and sisters in the Lord. Experiencing that in a tangible way is always exciting.

“Let not our longing slay the appetite of our living.”

I think that quote by Jim Elliot is just as profound as his more famous words, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep…”

I’ve just finished reading Elisabeth Elliot’s book, Passion and Purity, which has definitely earned a place on my “top ten” list of amazing books. It ranks right up there with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, C.S. Lewis’ Till we have Faces, Virgil’s Aeneid, and the works of the Bronte sisters.

I think there’s a certain amount of misconception that surrounds Passion and Purity, which is probably perpetuated by the subtitle “Learning to bring your Love Life under Christ’s Control” that appears prominently on the cover of current paperback editions, and also by modern-day courtship-guru Joshua Harris’ ringing endorsement that appears all over the back and foreword of the book and throughout his own works. Passion and Purity has the reptuation for being another one of those dating books…and a pretty stuffy one at that. However, I would assert that while the story of Elisabeth Elliot’s extended courtship with her husband Jim is integral to the book because she relates the things she learned and struggled with during that time, Passion and Purity is much deeper than your average manual for Christian romance. I am not courting/dating, nor do I expect to be anytime soon (though of course I wouldn’t mind, provided I had confidence that it was the correct time/situation to begin doing so). However, I found the book to be quite helpful and relevant in spite of it. While the book explores submitting to God’s will in the context of Jim and Elisabeth’s longing to be with one another while they knew it was right for them to remain apart, the truths she found solace in and would have her dating-manual-readers subscribe to are completely relevant and sufficiently well-said to be comforting and encouraging to anyone who struggles with waiting on God’s will in their life, for any number of reasons–for instance, life calling/career issues or difficulty conceiving a child. When read with an open mind, the stories of Elliot’s struggles with her courtship become mere illustrations, pointing to greater truths, and Elliot’s book becomes less and less of a dating manual, and more of a companion book for one’s Christian life–an encouragement to trust in the Lord and strive for purity in all areas of one’s thoughts and actions and relationships.

And doesn’t that make sense, in a way? Because dating (or courtship if you prefer) is of course a part of the Christian life. What sets Passion and Purity apart is that rather than discussing dating in the context of the Christian life, as its peers do, it deals with the Christian life in the context of dating. That is, rather than saying “here’s how we date, now let’s look at it in the context of the Christian’s life and tweak it a little so it fits better”, Passion and Purity says, “Here’s how, as Christians, we ought to live and love God.” Honoring God is the central idea in the book, as Elliot talks over and over about who God is and how we, as his people, relate to him. She applies these truths to romantic relationships–but that material is secondary, and easily passed over, if that’s not particularly relavent to one’s current circumstances. It doesn’t take a PhD in theology to read Elisabeth’s words and the Bible passages throughout the book and apply them to whatever trial one happens to be facing. The meat of the book lies in the Christian’s relationship with her Lord, rather than her beloved, and that makes it worthy of my top ten.

I’m not going to unilaterally say that “ohmigosh, every1 needs to read this book! lolz!” but I definitely think that whether or not you’re in or even seeking a romantic relationship, reading it would be time well spent, especially if you’ve thought about picking it up before but for whatever reason, didn’t. It’s probably more appealing/enjoyable for women than men, however I can’t state that very emphatically, given Joshua Harris’ unbounding affection for it!

So now I’m curious. What’s in your top ten?

Father God, sometimes I really, really wish You’d stop giving me what I ask for.

When I asked you to make me grow, you placed me in all kinds of situations which were way over my head and required me to act with maturity.

When I asked you to grant me peace, my life only became more tumultuous.

When I asked you to help me remember that I am merely a vagabond in this world, people reviled me for my faith and made sure I knew I was an outcast.

When I asked you to show me how to live with true joy, my loved one died, and I learned what it means to mourn.

When I asked you to give me patience, you had me appointed Sunday school teacher for 10 third-grade girls. When I asked again, you sent me a particularly challenging violin student and then caused the rest of my students to forget half of what I’ve taught them. The third time around, Mrs. TerHaar roped me into volunteering for VBS this year.

When I asked you to help me trust you for my every need, my car broke down. Then some of my friends went far away. Then I didn’t get the job I wanted. Then every last one of my scholarships was rescinded. And my prayers for a spouse continue to be answered, “wait”.

Sanctification…is there no other way–something that isn’t quite so exhausting and uncomfortable? It so often feels like trial by fire.
I guess that’s probably because it is, seeing as the Holy Spirit is a consuming fire.