For the lonely in the season of singleness

"God sets the lonely in families." But you read that line and feel it pass over you like weather, because you are still waiting for a hand to set you down. When did you start believing the sentence was about other people?

You have made a refuge of your own isolation. You tell yourself that needing no one is safer than being set anywhere, that a locked door cannot disappoint you. But a fortress is not a family, and your self-sufficiency has only taught you to endure the cold.

The verse names God "a father of the fatherless" in his holy habitation — and the gospel says he did not stay in that habitation. In Christ, God came to dwell among the unplaced, and on the cross Christ was forsaken so the forsaken could be set in God's family. The Spirit who raised him now sets you in a family that is not of your making.

Will you let his hand set you down where you could never set yourself?