‘There’s no passage in the Bible about dating’

While dating is a modern concept, Elaine Storkey unpacks two biblical stories where women were given a voice when deciding their future 

I was once asked by a big London church to speak to a gathering of 20-somethings after the evening worship service. The group encouraged Christian believers to get to know each other and grow into greater discipleship, so I prepared a pastoral and spiritual talk. To my surprise, however, during the notices the pastor announced the title of my talk as: ‘What I expect from a date’. I was just about to celebrate my silver wedding, so all my ‘dates’ for the last 25 years had been with my husband (and fairly predictable!) so I felt suddenly out of my depth. For the final ten minutes of the service, I prayed my way out of my nicely prepared talk and listened hard to what God might want me to say.