Being Single & Whole

Anna was a widow who had been married for only seven years before her husband died. The text says she "did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day." She was eighty-four years old.

Decades of singleness. Decades of devotion. And then — the day everything converged. She was in the temple when Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus for his presentation. She saw him. She knew him. And "she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem."

Anna's singleness was not her story of loss. It was the long formation of a prophet — a woman whose decades of undivided devotion had sharpened her to recognize the Son of God when the rest of Jerusalem walked past him.

Her season of aloneness was the season of her becoming. And her becoming was exactly what the moment required.

The Nazarite vow was an ancient practice in Israel. A person — man or woman — could choose to dedicate a season of their life entirely to God. No wine, no cutting of hair, no contact with the dead. Ordinary things laid aside as a sign of extraordinary dedication.

The purpose wasn't deprivation. It was consecration — the act of declaring: for this season, I am wholly God's. My body reflects my soul's dedication. What I carry on the outside corresponds to what I'm doing on the inside.

Samson was a Nazarite from birth. Samuel was dedicated before he was born. Paul may have taken a Nazarite vow in Acts 18. In each case, the setting apart was not a limitation on life — it was a form of it.

Singleness can function as a kind of vow: a season in which the body and the spirit both say, "I belong wholly to God, and I am learning what that means."

Jesus came to the home of Martha and Mary. Martha worked. She prepared. She cooked. She managed. And she grew frustrated that her sister was sitting at Jesus's feet instead of helping.

"Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me."

Jesus answered gently: "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her."

Mary was not being lazy. She was being devoted. She had chosen the better thing: proximity to Jesus, in the moment he was present, without distraction.

Paul's vision for the single believer in 1 Corinthians 7 is exactly this: the freedom to sit at the feet of Jesus without a divided mind, choosing the good portion that cannot be taken away.