I'm twenty-five and single. I don't say that for you to feel bad for me. I don't need your pity, it won't make me any less single and it won't buy me food, so pity is useless. I've had a lot of people feel compelled to comfort me in my current state, sometimes that comfort is fished for, often it's not. And most of the time I have no idea where it comes from at all.
More often than not I'm told "don't worry, she is out there somewhere," or "God's got a great girl for you," or "if soandso can get a girl so can you," etc. It's not just about being single, I get this kind of comfort for a lot of things: "Don't worry, you will get a good job someday," "Someday you'll have a car that doesn't have a big dent in the back of it that people laugh at." Stuff like that. And I have to wonder: Where do these promises come from? How can you guarantee any of this?
Existentialism promised me life defined by pain and difficulty, broken up by moments of levity and joy that are to be cherished and never taken for granted. But make no mistake, in existentialism to live is to suffer. So sad!
The Bible makes several promises of the Lord caring for His own and never forsaking them, but those promises are made to provide comfort because we are also faced with the reality that to be a Christian we must take up our cross, be salt and light, forsake our old life with its passions and desires, seek truth, deny ourselves, face persecution, persevere through trials, etc. I am promised two things: 1) that to be a Christian in this life is to be at war with a world consumed by sin and rebelling against the God I serve, and 2) the Lord will always be with me to love and guide me through all of this (and more than that that this life is temporary, I wait for the joy of heaven that minimized all the trials in this world).
But nowhere do I find a promise that I will meet a beautiful girl and get married. Nowhere is there a mention that I will have a car that doesn't threaten to break down every couple of months. Nowhere am I promised a job that will help me save for a retirement (that is only good if I'm on this planet long enough to enjoy it) or will get me enough money to not have to have ramen noodles be a common part of my diet.
There was a girl I was seeing a while back and she had some things she was worried about. What she wanted to be told was that everything was going to be okay, that the problems would be taken care of and so she didn't need to worry. That might have been the right thing to say at the time, I don't know. But that isn't what I said, which might be the reason for why I said "I was seeing" rather than saying "I am seeing"... who's to say? All I could say was that no matter what happens the details are not in our hands anymore. What is done is done, but no matter what we will deal with it and take each challenge as it comes, trusting that the Lord is guiding our lives.
I deeply appreciate my friends and family trying to comfort me. But I have to keep reminding myself and others that even if I never have any of these things Jesus is still Lord, and someday I will be with Him in paradise. That is what I'm living for and that's the thought that helps me wake up in the morning. Certainly sometimes I wonder if there is a girl out there for me and what she might be doing at any particular moment, and sometimes I wonder what it would be like to own a car where the steering column doesn't sporadically rattle inexplicably. But my comfort is in who Christ is, not in what I have. Jesus is still Lord regardless of marital status or possessions. I pray that that would be what brings us joy, not temporal things.
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