Half People

You know them.  You see them everyday.  Half people, they are all around us!  What am I talking about?  Maybe you.

I was sitting in church last Sunday, last row as usual (have to keep those visitors pushed forward!).  In front of me, every week, sits a young woman already verified as being a half person and why I started thinking about this idea.  I looked up to the choir and picked out another three, also known to be half people.  Then, I looked around our small sanctuary and could easily spot another thirty half people scattered about.

In fact, half people seem to make up half, if not a majority of my church, maybe yours as well.  These are people whom for one reason or another no longer have a spouse.

Through marriage, or even ‘arrangement’, two became one, because this is how God created us.  Single we are incomplete, but when committed to another we become complete.  We become a whole person, each taking up for the failings of the other, each holding the other up in prayer, each supporting their commitment to one another.  It is as it should be, though seems to rarely be.

Yet, due to death, divorce, desertion or just the fickle state of our hearts – we are ripped apart – torn in half to be more precise.  No longer would man know the pleasure of having someone whom completes and supports him; no longer would woman know the security of being loved by one.  And this tearing often is in the form of the other ripping out our heart, biting out chunks, until all that is left is emptiness.  (Ok, ask me how I really feel today!)

For some, I have joy as they have found other spouses, though how they could ever cross that bridge again I have no idea – how do you learn to trust again?  (For some of these I worry about the Biblical basis for their remarriage!  But, God promises to make them one….).  And for others I understand all too well why they remain a half person by choice!  So it is with the young woman whom sits in front of me – wounded beyond consolation.

Several of my best friends have never married and in the 35 years of knowing one man, he has maybe only twice even met a female he liked enough to ask out.  Yes, all brain and no romance.  I often marvel at him and his choice to live alone.  And yes, God does use him in a very big way!

Paul, the apostle, encouraged half people to marry, if they needed to – in order to avoid sin (he uses lust and a tendency to gossip as examples).  As for my friend, he has no apparent need to marry and so never has.

Separated, even divorced, couples are to reconcile with one another.  That is priority one, or at least supposed to be.  When reconciliation is not even a possibility – well, half people are created…..

All the more reason for the young around us to guard their hearts and understand the Biblical qualifications for marriage and holding prospects to those standards!  There are already too many half people walking around – you do not need to be one…..