Written by Michelle J. Goff, Director of Iron Rose Sister Ministries
February is Iron Rose Sister Ministries’ Prayer Month. We invite you to pray with us daily, following our prayer prompts and reading the Bible verses. The Prayer Calendar and instructions are available for download. Each year, we also join as one voice for a 24-hour Prayer-a-thon on the 24th.
This year, an additional facet of what we are celebrating during the first week of our Prayer Month are the prayers of single and single-again women.
Taken from One Single Reason: Conversations with Single Women, page 193:
“Anna, a widow in the temple after only seven years of marriage, chose to live a life of gratefulness and service to God. Her words of thanksgiving were expressed as worshipful praise, fasting and praying. God honored Anna with the blessing of meeting the Christ child before the end of her life (Luke 2:37-38). Imagine her words of thanksgiving!
Songs and psalms of praise can be helpful when we don’t have the words to express thanksgiving in the moment. Many of the psalms start with a frustration or a lament, but then end in words of praise. When we take things to God, no matter how we are feeling or what we are thinking, He is able to put things in perspective. In the same way the persistent widow sought justice before the judge in Luke 18, we know that when we go to God in prayer, we are presenting our requests to the one who has the power to do something about it. God is not afraid of our emotions, our frustrations, even our anger. He gave us those feelings and can guide us to know what to do with them.”
Miriam, another single woman in the Bible, expressed her feelings through prayerful, worshipful song, and led other women in that spirit of celebration, after crossing the Red Sea.
Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women followed her, with timbrels and dancing. Miriam sang to them:
“Sing to the Lord,
for he is highly exalted.
Both horse and driver
he has hurled into the sea.” (Ex. 15:20-21)
Hagar, who later became a single mom (Gen. 21), lifted a cry of prayer to God before the birth of her son, Ishmael.
She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” (Gen. 16:13)
Who are some of the other single women of the Bible whose prayers we hear in Scripture?