40 / Wilderness / Quarantine

Now about 40. It’s used a lot in the Bible. Certainly in regard to time in the wilderness. (40 days for Jesus, 40 years for the Israelites). My thought is that 40 is the time between conception and birth. 40 weeks is about the length of an average pregnancy. So, when we enter Lent for 40 days we are entering the wilderness. But, could we also be entering a womb of sorts, a time of gestation. After his Baptism Jesus could not have started his ministry without entering the wilderness. I suppose he could have, but it wouldn’t have been as effective. I don’t think entering the wilderness is optional for us, if we are followers of the way Jesus took. It is essential.

During the Plague in the 14th century the officials quarantined ships arriving in a port for 40 days. In the Italian ‘quarantine’, a space of forty days from ‘quaranta’,  forty from Classical Latin ‘quadraginta’ from base of quattuor, four. I believe they chose the number not for scientific reasons, but rather because of its use in the Bible. The time they thought it’d take to make it safe for passengers to disembark.

So, if Lent is a time of gestation, what are we about to give birth to? It is also interesting, that we entered Lent, and reside there for 40 days, into the wilderness. We do this at the time of the Coronavirus outbreak and possible ‘quarantines’. So, we might ask, What might we need to be quarantined for, spiritually?