God sets the lonely in families
(Originally published by the Nashotah House Theological Seminar Daily Reflections)
Nashotah House Theological Seminary invited me to offer a devotional for the Second Tuesday of Lent (featured in their Lent + Eastertide Daily Reflections):
Lenten practices help Christians increase awareness of their own sin and the brokenness of the world around them. Loneliness from a lack of real, lived-in family is a painful part of that brokenness. Yet Psalm 68 provides hope and a promise: God promises to “set the lonely in families” while recounting His many victories to demonstrate that He has the power to keep His promises.
Psalm 68 is a song of victory, a litany of the promises God has kept. God empowered Moses to free God's people, led the Israelites through the wilderness, and delivered the land of Canaan to His people.
Among these is a celebration that God marches triumphantly on behalf of the oppressed and a promise:
"God sets the lonely in families,
he leads out the prisoners with singing;
but the rebellious live in sun-scorched land." (v. 6, NIV)
God made us for family.
God is a being who enjoys intimacy within the Trinity and between Christ and the Church—His family. The love in God's family is characterized by diversity, intimacy, giving life, faithfulness, sacrifice, and hospitality. Because we were created in God’s image, we were created for this same kind of intimacy in the context of human family. We are all made for diverse, intimate, life-giving community that is marked by faithfulness, sacrifice, and hospitality.
But family doesn't just mean married people and kids. In Matthew 12:46-50, Jesus subverts our understanding of family, rejecting familial ties based solely on biology and instead establishing that Christian family is bound by the blood of Christ. Jesus defines Christian family as a small community of Christians who live life together and embody the gospel for each other. From the beginning, families made up of God’s children were intended to imitate the love within the Trinity and between God and His people: to bear the image of that love.
Christians of every age and stage of life have become keenly aware of the not-yet-ness of our experience of family.
This has been particularly felt by those who live alone: widows, divorcees, those committed to vocational singleness, and people who are involuntarily single. These Christians ordinarily rely on community groups and worship services to meet their needs for healthy human connection. Social distancing and church cancelations have eliminated the primary ways single Christians experience family in the body of Christ.
The pandemic has left single Christians alone and without family. But our churches can fulfill God's promise in Psalm 68 to set the lonely in families.
Those in nuclear families can open up their communities to single Christians in safe ways, and, in the process, married and single Christians alike will find a richer experience of family in the body of Christ.
Not sure how to collaborate with God to fulfill this promise? Here’s three ways you can set the lonely in families:
1. Pray for those who are lonely today.
2. Consider adding single Christians to your quarantine bubbles, sustaining them through this pandemic.
3. Commit to doubling your efforts of building family in the body of Christ once this season has passed.
