Seeing Your Current Status as a Spiritual Gift.

Most Christians know something about spiritual gifts. I think the most important thing to know about them is that they are given for the benefit of the entire church body. In Did I Kiss Marriage Goodbye?, Carolyn McCully points out that when singleness is referred to as a gift, the word is the same word used to describe any spiritual gift-administration, mercy, generosity, faith, etc. So your singleness (or marriage or childlessness or widowhood) is for the benefit of the church. We need people with children in the church-that is how we make new converts. It is necessary for couples to get married and make new people. The church also needs single people-they usually have more time and money to give to the church. We need all kinds at church. We need people who know babies to help out in the nursery, and we need people like me (Does the diaper go on the head? Do little babies like burritos?) to stay out of the nursery. There are all kinds of needs, and there are all kinds of people to meet those needs.

I imagine it like this: imagine you have rich parents who give you a brand new car the day you get your license. You are elated, but not for long. You see your friends working their fingers to the bone and pinching pennies so that one day they might be able to buy some heap of junk car that barely runs. You love your car, and you want to share the joy of it, but how? You give your friends a ride whenever you can. You pick them up from work. You take them to church.
That's how I see my marriage. It is a great blessing to me, and I love the feeling of family and the joy it brings. I want to share that warm and comfortable feelings with single friends, and making them feel like a part of my family. That is especially important during the holidays, when so many are far from their own families. To paraphrase a line from Spiderman, "With great blessing comes great responsibility."