Marriage and Celibacy: Lifelong Grace One Day at a Time

While
marriage and celibacy may technically be opposites, they have at least one
thing in common. Both can seem overwhelming when one imagines them lasting for
a lifetime.

Even if
you deeply love your spouse, the thought of putting up with his or her foibles
or coldness or chaos every day for the rest of your life may be enough to make
your hyperventilate. Likewise, those who have chosen to lead a celibate life
may be happy in their friendships, their church, and their work, but when they peer
into the future, the frightening prospect of growing old alone overshadows the
mercies provided in the present.

If the
thought of enduring your marriage or lack of marriage for the rest of your life
is daunting, it is because God doesn’t hand out grace in a lifetime supply. He
provides it one day at a time. If you feel like God has not given you the capacity
to love your spouse for a lifetime, that’s because he hasn’t. But he has given
you exactly what you need to be loving today. Furthermore, God has not given celibates
the grace to bear a lifetime of solitude. But he will give you what you need to
make it through this day.

As C. S.
Lewis wrote in a letter to Mary Willis Shelburne, ““[I]t is seldom the present
& the actual that is intolerable. Remember one is given the strength to
bear what happens to one, but not the 100 and 1 different things that
might happen.”

Jesus
sought daily strength from his Father. He expected it would be provided as he
needed it. That timely help is what God has promised to us:

For
we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let
us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive
mercy and find
grace to help in time of
need. (Hebrews 4:15-16, ESV, emphasis added)

God will
give us what we need, but he will not give it to us until we need it. He didn’t
give the Israelites enough food to last through forty years in the wilderness; he
gave them manna one day at a time. None of us has a lifelong stockpile of grace,
but we can look forward to God’s faithfulness over a lifetime, offered to us
one day at a time.