Is it God’s will for us to get married?   Generally speaking, yes. Take yourself back to the book of Genesis, where we get to watch the creation of the world unfold like a play on center stage. In the beginning, everything is dark and shapeless. With each scene, the world takes shape: light, stars, sun, dry land, trees.   The story builds with a sense of some grand climax to come; God isn’t just randomly creating things left and right. He’s preparing for something. That something was the creation of Man, set in the center of the garden.   Everything he needed to live and breathe was...

Happy New Year, lovely single woman!   I’ve been thinking a lot about you as the year begins, about the circumstance of prolonged singleness and the various responses you and I have to it.   As I’ve been researching and writing about this topic over the last year, I’ve had a variety of responses to it myself. But the overwhelming question in my heart has been, What can I do about it?   One idea is to pursue marriage. There’s nothing wrong with doing that in a godly way, as the Spirit leads. But one thing I believe. I can “work on” myself as a woman so I can be a godly wife. I can put...

The last month of the year has begun, and for a while now I have been contemplating some goals for the new year. I’m realizing—hopefully not too late in life—that I’ve never really been great at setting and pursuing annual goals.   As I finish another year of singleness, it suddenly occurs to me to ask, Can I make marriage a goal for the new year?   Obviously, the answer is No. A goal has to be something that I can control. Marriage classifies as a desire.   But is it a desire I can pursue? If so, what does that mean?   And in light of God’s sovereignty, should it be something that...

I like old poetry and hymns and texts with ancient, mysterious words—as long as I know what those words mean. Knowing the meaning of old, complicated words makes them more beautiful. Here are a few examples of archaic yet lovely language:   From the hymn, “At the Cross,” by Isaac Watts:   Alas! and did my Savior bleed and did my Sovereign die? Would he devote that sacred head for sinners such as I?   A few stanzas from the poem “Light Shining out of Darkness” by William Cowper:   God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides...

By Rachel Empey   A few weeks ago, I sat in the room with one of my sweet sisters while she was laboring to give birth to her first child. Thankful to be by her side, I quietly prayed for God’s grace, and thanked Him for His unfailing faithfulness. This wasn’t the first time I had the incredible privilege of being there when one of my nieces or nephews took their first breath – I hoped it wouldn’t be the last. Being an aunt is one of my favorite roles in life; being a sister is the only thing that compares.   Beneath the soft sounds of heart monitors and hushed voices, however, came the...