Virginity Part 1
My
heart goes out to the countless women in their thirties and forties who write
to me in real agony of soul because they are still single. There were two
letters in this mornings mail. One said, “I am a Christian woman thirty years
of age and I am facing the possibility of a life of singleness.” The other: “I
am forty-one years old. I never dreamed I would not be married- I’ve been
praying for a husband ever since I was sixteen. “
This phenomenon, due in part, I suppose, to what demographers are calling “the postponed generaton” (the Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964) has reached catastrophic proportions. Men postpone marriage ten or twenty years beyond what used to be considered the marrying age. When the mirror tells them they’re fast aging they decide it’s time to settle down.
Feeling that a young wife will lend a certain assurance that they are not quite over the hill, they pass up women of their own age. Everywhere my husband and I go, we meet lovely Christian women, beautifully dressed, deeply spiritual, thoroughly feminine- and single. They long for marriage and children. But what is it with the men? Are they blind to feminine pulchritude, deaf to God’s call, numb to natural desire? I am reminded of the conversation I had with Gladys Alyward thirty years ago. She had been a missionary in Chine for six or seven years before she ever thought of wanting a husband. When a British couple came to work near her she began to watch the wonderful thing they had in marriage, and to desire it for herself. Being a woman of prayer she prayed- a straight-forward request that God would call a man from England, send him straight out to China, and have him propose. She leaned towards me on the sofa on which we were sitting, her black eyes snapping, her bony little forefinger jabbing at my face. “Elisabeth,” she said, “I believe God answers prayer! He called him,” then, in a whisper of keen intensity, “but he never came.”
Where are the holy men of God willing to shoulder the full responsibility of manhood, to take the risks and make the sacrifices of courting and winning a wife, marrying her and fathering children in the obedience to the command to be fruitful? While the church has been blessed by men willing to remain single for the sake of the Kingdom (and I do not regard lightly such men who are seriously called), isn’t it obvious that God calls most men to marriage? By not marrying, those whom he calls are disobeying Him, and thus are denying the women He meant for them to marry the privileges of being wife and mother. (See my newsletter, “A Man Moves Toward Marriage,” July/August ’88.)
This phenomenon, due in part, I suppose, to what demographers are calling “the postponed generaton” (the Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964) has reached catastrophic proportions. Men postpone marriage ten or twenty years beyond what used to be considered the marrying age. When the mirror tells them they’re fast aging they decide it’s time to settle down.
Feeling that a young wife will lend a certain assurance that they are not quite over the hill, they pass up women of their own age. Everywhere my husband and I go, we meet lovely Christian women, beautifully dressed, deeply spiritual, thoroughly feminine- and single. They long for marriage and children. But what is it with the men? Are they blind to feminine pulchritude, deaf to God’s call, numb to natural desire? I am reminded of the conversation I had with Gladys Alyward thirty years ago. She had been a missionary in Chine for six or seven years before she ever thought of wanting a husband. When a British couple came to work near her she began to watch the wonderful thing they had in marriage, and to desire it for herself. Being a woman of prayer she prayed- a straight-forward request that God would call a man from England, send him straight out to China, and have him propose. She leaned towards me on the sofa on which we were sitting, her black eyes snapping, her bony little forefinger jabbing at my face. “Elisabeth,” she said, “I believe God answers prayer! He called him,” then, in a whisper of keen intensity, “but he never came.”
Where are the holy men of God willing to shoulder the full responsibility of manhood, to take the risks and make the sacrifices of courting and winning a wife, marrying her and fathering children in the obedience to the command to be fruitful? While the church has been blessed by men willing to remain single for the sake of the Kingdom (and I do not regard lightly such men who are seriously called), isn’t it obvious that God calls most men to marriage? By not marrying, those whom he calls are disobeying Him, and thus are denying the women He meant for them to marry the privileges of being wife and mother. (See my newsletter, “A Man Moves Toward Marriage,” July/August ’88.)
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