THE OTHER IMPORTANT BIBLE NUMBER [R, 4-22-20]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Times of Winter

THE OTHER IMPORTANT BIBLE NUMBER    [R, 4-22-20]

It’s been forty days of quarantine now. At least, Helen & I have been in quarantine for 40. Maybe your count is a little different.

After 40 days in quarantine, strange things happen. I read in “The Indiana Daily Student” newspaper that professors are now required to report students who come to class on Zoom naked.

I wonder if 40 is some magic number for needing exposure. Did Noah have to put up with naked animals running around the ark? Did Moses tell Aaron, “Put that durn cloak back on when you strike that rock.”

Forty! Today! Shouldn’t this thing be over? I mean, 40 is the big number in the Bible for being over. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness before he started his ministry. It rained for 40 days and 40 nights while Noah kept reminding everyone on the ark, “We’ll get through this together.” The Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years before God said, “You people are never going to find your way. Just go ahead and kill everybody in that place over there and claim that it’s holy.”

Forty and it’s done! Really?

Yes, I’m getting a little jaded. We’ve done everything we are supposed to do to protect ourselves and others from the corona beer… oops, I mean virus…and it looks like we’re going to keep on doing it for quite a while. It’s getting boring, even to someone who loves staying home and doing nothing.

That 40 is a very important number in the Bible, but there is another highly significant number in scripture-- the unknown number.

Jesus reminds us that the hairs of our head are numbered, but that number is known only to God. Jesus reminds us that no one knows how many days how we have to go until it’s over. “No one knows about that day or hour except the Father.” [Mt 24:36, Mk 13:32]

The most significant number is “something God alone can see,” as Natalie Sleeth puts it in her elegantly simply “Hymn of Promise.”

Sometimes forty is enough. If so, it’s because it’s the number God has chosen. Right now, God chooses not the biblical forty, but the other biblical number, the unknown number. We keep keeping on until God says it’s been long enough.

John Robert McFarland