segregated

This really happened to me at church not too long ago.

nice lady:  So, do you have kids?

me (a little taken aback at her first get-to-know-you question):  No ma'am, it's just me.  I'm single.

nice lady:  Oh, I'm sorry.  Wait, I don't mean that being single is bad ... I just meant ...

me (only half-way trying to alleviate her embarrassment): It's really okay.  I know what you meant.

And I do know what she meant.

She isn't in the minority.  On the whole, I'd suggest that the Church doesn't know quite what to do with single people: how to engage them, how to include them, how to minister to them.

She felt badly that she implied that singleness is inferior to marriage and children, and maybe that she had spotlighted it as my reality at all.

I admit that my flesh enjoyed watching her squirm, and at the personal rebuke she seemed to have self-inflicted.  That was not-so-Christ-like on my part.

But I couldn't stop thinking about that conversation, and I couldn't help but wonder -- and grieve -- how the Church has found itself in such a segregated mess.

In Sunday school classes of young marrieds, or singles, or college and careers, or senior adults, no one feels segregated; indeed they are comforted by the uniformity surrounding them.  They feel normal, and like the others; they fit.  We gather together and grow with those in the same life phase, we're told is the strategy.

Believe me, I have known the benefits of this structure.  When I was visiting churches and looking for a place to serve, it was comforting to find others who were "like me." Some of my dearest friendships were born out of this model.

However, I sense that somewhere along the way, a dangerous undercurrent developed that has left us struggling to value, or seek out, unity with brothers and sisters outside our own church-defined classification.  What happened to the command in Titus 2, that older men and women should be training up younger men and women in the ways of righteousness?

It's easy to develop a narrow-mindedness, and lose the ability to mingle with and learn from people outside the circles in which we live.

More concerning, though, is that buried within this self-centered tunnel vision, we unknowingly buy into the lie that our particular life phase marks a more arduous path of sanctification.

When we began the process of adoption, we experienced the Gospel in a way like never before.

When I got married, sin was revealed to me in a way it would never have been if I were single.

I have never known a more painful refining process than having been single for so long.

I have grown more in my understanding of God the Father as a parent than I ever would otherwise.

Recovering from the depths of my addiction has, hands down, brought me closer to Jesus than I ever would have otherwise.

I believe all of these statements can be true, because, praise Jesus, in all of His mysterious sovereignty, God knows exactly how, and at what pace, and at what cost, we all will be sanctified, until the day we stare Jesus in the face.

For some that means enduring the loss of a loved one.  For others, persevering through an illness or unemployment.  Some will experience broken marriages, and others will long for marriage for a lifetime.

I don't think that nice lady who stepped into an awkward conversation with me thinks of herself as superior to me because she is married with children.  She might open with a different question next time she decides to meet someone new, but otherwise, she and I are the same.

Segregated.

But we can't be segregated by our "life phase," because on every road of every believer, God is faithful to challenge our hearts in every way, for as long as we roam this earth, so that we have the opportunity and privilege to become more like Jesus.

None of these paths is superior to another, and we can cling to unity in that truth alone.