This week we have been bombarded with numbers. Numbers of absentee ballots, of electoral college votes, of new covid cases, percentage of positive test rates. We are swimming in a sea of numbers and statistics and trying to make meaning of it all. Sometimes the numbers are overwhelming and sometimes they are comforting and sometimes they simply make us numb.
This past week the numbers become more personal at our house. Our middle child, Kyle, was diagnosed with covid and immediately went on lock down in his bedroom so as to not share the infection with his wife and three young children. He has had all the classic symptoms: fever, aches, chest pain, cough, loss of taste and smell and tiredness. Suddenly I didn’t really care how many new cases were in the news. I only worried about Kyle and how to cheer him, pray for him, take food to his family, who are also on quarantine. The only number that mattered now was this one. Until his 7-year old daughter also was diagnosed with covid. And we await results for the others in the household. I think of myself as a rational person but when it is one of your own, you begin to quiver with fear, weep with worry and feel totally helpless to make it better. (Fortunately, we had not been with them in person for more than two weeks).
Political numbers can also become intensely personal. I had delivered our son’s absentee ballot to Union Station the day before the election and found hundreds of folks in line at 8:00 a.m. Then on Tuesday I walked over to the church where the line wrapped through the back driveway at 6:00 a.m. It is a reminder that when 160 million Americans vote, that each vote is a real human person making an effort to shape the common good. The votes that are counted are more than numbers. They are the hopes and dreams of the people for our shared future.
The Bible is also filled with numbers and sometimes we wrestle with what meaning the numbers hold. Seven days of creation makes seven indicate completion, wholeness, perfection. Forty years of waiting in the wilderness makes 40 mean a very long time. And then there is that story that Jesus tells about the one lost sheep. He reminds us of the shepherd who leaves the flock of 99 in search of the one who is lost. “When he has found it he lays it on his shoulder and rejoices.” Then Jesus tells them that heaven rejoices when one of us turns around and finds the way back to God. For every single one of us is counted as God’s beloved.
