Today’s passage is Numbers 2:1-34. The Lord tells Moses where the tribes are to camp. Judah and two others camp in the east with 186,400 men. In the south Reuben and two others camp with 151,450 men. The Levites are in the middle uncounted. In the west with two other tribes is Ephraim with 108,100 men. In the north with two others is Dan with 157,600 men.
What are the numbers?
Today I got a parking ticket at my swimming pool. It cost me 32,000 won.
My wife showed no sympathy. Follow the rules, she said.
Because I didn’t want to use the swimming pool parking garage, which is free, and I parked in a no parking zone, I was fined.
I had been disobedient, I was punished. I repented and made an application to use the parking garage from now on.
Follow the rules.
32,000 is a big number. It’s just about the size of the fighting of Manasseh at 32,200.
I wondered what percentage of my monthly wage the fine represented.
As soon as I started on numbers, however, I found myself in a wilderness of them.
How many times a week do I go swimming?
How far do I swim each time in my class?
It’s different each time because the coach assigns different lengths for different strokes.
How fast do I swim? Am I faster than when I was 14?
How much older am I than the other swimmers?
Am I the oldest? How young is the youngest?
How many students are there in my school?
How many countries do they represent?
How many teachers are there? How many countries do they represent?
What is the size of the graduating class? The kindergarten class? Which grade has the most students?
How many grades are there? How many boys? How many girls? What time does our school start? When is Music class?
How many school days in the year? How many holidays?
Numbers, numbers, numbers. At my subway stop there is a long staircase with four separate rises with 15 stairs in each rise.
How many calories do I use walking up? How much stronger does it make my legs for swimming?
How many calories do I eat? How much do I weigh? How tall am I? How much does my wife weigh?
How many push-ups can I do? What time do I go to bed?
Once I start thinking about numbers I have a hard time stopping. I become like Count Count on Sesame Street.
For the next year my school is doing a self-examination and we’re counting everything--students, teachers, classes, who leaves, who stays, how the students’ marks have changed this year, last year, 20 years ago.
All this counting is called data. The are graphs and spreadsheets full of data. Numbers everywhere. It’s a wilderness of numbers! My teachers and I have to analyse it, interpret it, and make plans based on it.
The world is full of data, full of numbers that I have to keep track of.
Sometimes I feel like I’m ruled by numbers. And now we’re reading the only book in the Bible called Numbers.
How many chapters are there? How many verses? And after just two chapters I’ve counted 17 different numbers, all big, and that’s just the men over 20. What about their parents, their siblings, their wives? My imagination is counting millions, not thousands.
Only the Levites have no numbers.
That’s when I take a breath. The Levites have no numbers.
The Israelites are in the wilderness and counting themselves, but the Levites are not counted.
And they camp in the centre. What’s God telling them? What’s he telling me?
At the centre of my life there is no data because God is there. I can’t count his mercies to me, I can’t count his forgiveness for my many and continuing sins, I can’t count his love for me. It’s too big.
I can’t deserve it or earn any of it. It’s free. There’s no number on it.
What do I do with this numberless love of God in the centre of my life?
Sing Hallelujah and try to keep the rules because I know he wants me to and he likes it when I do.
Application: Pay my parking ticket and park in the parking garage from now on.
Lord, thank you for showing me that you are the quiet calm of no numbers in the wilderness of all the numbers in my world. Let me rest there with you each day.
