Single Moms

Single moms have many burdens, they don't need Christians ragging on them.

I've encountered a few single moms lately, and my heart goes out to them. One of these ladies related to me a particular event that caused me to burn.

She is already weighed down by the pressures of motherhood, the past which brought her into this situation (which God has graciously forgiven), and the looming recognition that her child does not have a father figure in the home. Upon going to a Bible study, where you think she would find encouragement and consolation, she became weighted down even more with a big, old slab of guilt.

It seems that a well intended (but terribly insensitive) Christian thought that they would press "the family issue." This soul dwelt heavily upon the sad conditions of broken homes and the likelihood of those children growing up to be delinquents (statistics backing it all up of course). Certainly you can see how the guilt and fear would naturally fall upon my friend.

We Christians should be a bit smarter. Sure we acknowledge and revere God's original design for the home, but we should also recognize the sovereignty of God in parenting. Single mothers (or fathers) are just as dependent upon God as two parent homes. There is nothing about having two parents that guarantees "the good life" for the kids.

I almost want to go so far as to say, throw out the statistics. I sincerely believe that a godly single parent is much stronger than an ungodly two parent house. The prayers of a godly single mother are powerful and effective.

One comes to my head immediately in this regard. It has to do with the greatest theologian of the first millennium: St. Augustine. As far as I know, his father was not in the picture. I do know that Augustine attributes his life and its success to his mother, Monica. That's because she prayed.

Augustine might have been on the track to be a statistic in his younger life, but God heard Monica's prayers. His intervention (and her prayers!) turned the world upside-down.

My Christian friends, let's stop trying to be the "family friendly" churches everybody is trying to be. These so-called "family friendly" churches have only served to be just the opposite. Let's simply stick with the gospel and how it mends the scars that we stupid parents (single and 2 parent) have created in our sin.