No fortuity in 40

FROM A simple matter of fortuity turning into some grand design of the divine, a number – naturally the numerologists, primarily the religious – among us beheld in the declaration of the enhanced community quarantine over all Luzon last March.

Quarantine – in its essential meaning of “a period of 40 days” – falling well within the 40-day Lenten season, instantly raising anything and everything epochally fortyish in Holy Writ and extrapolating these to the current of present events. Notwithstanding that the ECQ was framed in 30, rather than 40, days. Thus:

God putting Noah and his immediate family in the quarantine of the Ark as He flooded the earth with rain for 40 days and 40 nights.

Moses living 40 years in Egypt and 40 years in the desert before Yahweh chose him to lead His people out of slavery in Egypt.

Moses, again, up Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights to receive the Commandments.

Out of Egypt, the Israelites punished by wandering in the wilderness for 40 years as a purification for their sins, the “unfaithful” old generation passing on so that a new generation would rightfully possess the Promised Land.

Jonah, for 40 days, warning Nineveh of its impending destruction because of sin.

Jesus fasting in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights and tempted by the devil before commencing His ministry.

And, 40 days too marked the time Jesus stayed with His disciples from the day of His Resurrection to His glorious Ascension.

A period of isolation – quarantine defined there too – of testing, trial, and tribulation the number 40 has come to embody in scripture. Invariably leading to some salvific culmination.

So, it was written. Thus, the faithful pinned their hopes and directed their prayers to some kind of deliverance at the end of their ECQ sufferance.

Alas, it was not to be. No salvation, not even relief – a week before the scheduled end of the quarantine, but an extension of it for another fortnight in the high-risk areas, including Central Luzon, where the Covid-19 cases spiked.

So, why did it not come to pass as the faithful prayed and hoped for?

Cry now should we, collectively: “Eli, Eli lama sabachthani”?

Oh, ye men of little faith. As the Lord so lamented.

Isaiah 55:8 qualifying, thus: “’My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,’ says the LORD. ‘And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine’.”

“In His time, In His time, He makes all things beautiful in His time.” As the hymn reminds everyone.

So right are we in seeing some divine design out of the enhanced community quarantine.  

So wrong are we in impacting it purely with our human understanding.

Thereby imperiling us to – God forbid! – commit blasphemy.

I am not a theologian, not by the longest shot. Nor do I have the least conceit in exegeses. But to covet, indeed, to exact some magical, if divine, solution – in the context of the biblical experience – after 40 days of this Covid-19-imposed  quarantine, aye, even after the extension and beyond – is not that, in some way, boxing His Omnipotence, His Omniscience, His Omnipresence, in the finity of material time and space?  

Of which mortal man cannot. As immortal God is beyond limits. Or, He is not.

Man can only propose, as the proverb posited. The dispositive end is God’s.   

Take it from Job 22:21-22: “Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you.  Accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart.”

Submission to God. At no other time than in quarantine is this most…imperative was top-of-mind, but then the act of utmost surrender to the Almighty comes from one’s own volition, undemanded, unforced.  

Of letting go, and letting God. With a prayer.  

“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

So, with that reflection capped by Philippians 4:7, I start the 45^th day of my home quarantine.