Without having a partner, it can feel at times that life is miserable. By nature, we don’t want to be alone our entire lives. We want to have a beautiful life, yet we often think it is impossible to have one without being in a relationship or being married. While marriage is a beautiful thing, so is singleness. The Bible refers to singleness as a gift, “I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that” (1 Corinthians 7:7).
Within the broader context of this passage, Paul is talking about marriage. Paul praises marriage, yet he also doesn’t want singles to feel they have been slighted in life. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:7, he wished all people were like him—single. Singleness is a gift and it is one that needs to be embraced. On New Year’s, as well as every other day, we don’t need to feel we are lacking any good gift from the Lord.
As we are reflecting on this New Year, we don’t need to see singleness as a curse. We need to see it for what it is: a gift. A gift is not something that we begrudgingly accept. Instead, we accept gifts with joyful and happy hearts. Therefore, we need to accept the beautiful gift of singleness and to stop treating it as something to be fixed.
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