GREEN-LIGHT revolution

Have you ever played The Survival Game? Someone comes up with a dangerous scenario in which survival seems impossible, and you have three random items you must use to get out alive. For example, "You're on a plane that crashes in the Alps, and you are the only survivor. There was a terrible fire and everything on board burned except a toothbrush, a paperclip, and a package of Swedish Fish. How will you survive?"

I'm not very good at this game. My survival skills amount to using a cell phone and belonging to an auto club. I have, however, navigated the dangerous landscape of singleness, which can feel as lonesome as a desert island and as treacherous as a steep mountain range. In fact, singleness may be the ultimate survival game.

So here is your scenario, ladies: you are a single girl with a strong desire for marriage, who is part of an international family of churches full of eligible bachelors. You have three items in your gorgeous handbag: a veil, a flashlight, and a sword. How will you survive? This week, we will examine these three items and learn how they can help us not only survive, but thrive, as single women. Plus, if we learn to use these tools now, they will come in handy should God place us in another survival scenario, marriage.

The first tool in our handbag is the veil of submission—one that I was happy to leave at the bottom of my bag for a long time. Growing up in the grrrl power era of the 90s, everything from cereal boxes to school supplies spouted some kind of female empowerment message. Without being aware of it, I accepted the idea that equality and submission could not co-exist. When I came across passages in the Bible about wives submitting to husbands and women being silent, I felt like I had been given a second-class status in God’s family. Is there something horribly, inherently wrong with me as a girl? I wondered. I had loads of sinful attitudes, but all of them were also common to men. Why couldn't I be in charge? I was submitted to Jesus, the perfect man, so why would I need (or want) to submit to an imperfect one?

With all of these thoughts swimming around my brain, I finally decided to search this thing out in Scripture. That’s when I came across 1 Corinthians 11, where the Apostle Paul goes on and on about a particular item of clothing—the head covering. Seriously, Paul? I thought. I keep a few scarves on hand for bad hair days, but I had no idea I wasn't allowed to pray in church without one on my head. As I studied the Bible further and dipped into a few commentaries, though, I began to understand why Paul was so concerned with this ancient, feminine practice of covering the head….

I'm going to pause there and ask you to check back tomorrow to find out why the Apostle Paul made such a big deal about women's accessories and what that has to do with us. Until then....

Going green!

Lynn Fleshman

(Click here to read part 2 of this post.)