Singleness: A Life Grounded in Love

by Ruth Goring

Is being single a great adventure? Or is being single lonely and frustrating? What is God's ''word'' for your life in singleness? In this ten session LifeGuide® Bible Study, Ruth Goring leads you to explore these questions. You will learn to listen deeply to God, identify the gifts your life offers, cope effectively with temptation, make space for relationships, and grow into a sense of belonging. God is calling you today to a life of joy, peace and love. Being single doesn't mean waiting to answer that call. This LifeGuide Bible Study in IVP's revised format features questions for starting group discussions and for meeting God in personal reflection, as well as a new ''Now or Later'' section following each session to help you act on what you learn. For over three decades LifeGuide Bible Studies have provided solid biblical content and raised thought-provoking questions-making for a one-of-a-kind Bible study experience for individuals and groups. This series has more than 130 titles on Old and New Testament books, character studies, and topical studies.

94 pages, Paperback

Published January 31, 2023

About the author

A poet and an author-illustrator of children’s picture books were the first things I remember wanting to do when I grew up. A lot of life had to happen to me before those dreams could ripen—straddling two cultures, adopting and birthing children (one each way), love and loss, poverty, beauty, spiritual searching. I’m grateful for it all, and I’m hungry for more (as the song goes, “more love, more power, / more of You in my life”). My books and poems are expressions of that hunger.

Dearworthy, my little book of meditations on the beautiful writings of Julian of Norwich, each with a botanical image, was published in 2024 by Anamchara Books.

Isaiah and the Worry Pack, a children's picture book, was an inaugural IVP Kids publication in 2021. My author/illustrator debut, Picturing God (Beaming Books, 2019), was a Junior Literary Guild selection. And my beloved first picture book, Adriana's Angels / Los ángeles de Adriana, was published in 2017 by Sparkhouse Family / Augsburg Fortress; the Spanish edition won a silver Moonbeam Award that same year.

Yellow Doors, my first poetry collection, was published by WordFarm (2003-4); my second is Soap Is Political (Glass Lyre, 2015). I got to discuss Soap Is Political and read a few poems from the book in an interview with Jerome McDonnell of Chicago Public Radio’s Worldview program here: https://www.wbez.org/stories/ruth-gor.... My poems have appeared in CALYX, Pilgrimage, Comstock Review, RHINO, Iron Horse Literary Review, New Madrid, Crab Orchard Review, numerous other journals, and several anthologies. It's a privilege to have a poem in Martín Espada's 2019 anthology What Saves Us (NWU Press).

I grew up in Colombia and in recent years have traveled back to provide accompaniment and advocacy to Colombian peace communities and human rights defenders. And just to be with dear friends and glory in rivers, waterfalls, and the Andes mountains.