Susan Olmstead Wang

As yet a second child of ours turns 40, I struggle comprehend where the time has gone! In addition to remembering my own shock at turning 40 a long time ago, these 455 days since my state declared a “COVID shut-down” have further skewed my sense of time.
With many adults now vaccinated, the COVID situation in the US is better but many people in the world are still suffering the anxiety of not knowing how long or how bad their experience will be. During times of transition or stress, we would like to know how long we must endure. Probably, knowing does not actually improve the underlying situation in some tangible way, but the information and our trust in the quality of the information do help us cope.
Matthew 4 recounts the story of Jesus’ 40 days of fasting and temptation by Satan in the wilderness. “Forty” is most likely a symbolic or idiomatic number for major events related to salvation, whether 40 days (ex., Noah’s flood) or 40 years (ex., the Hebrews’ sojourn in the wilderness). It is associated with almost every new development in the history of God’s mighty acts. The Upper Room devotional magazine for June 9, 2021, observed that even Jesus may have had to endure the anxiety of not knowing how long his difficult temptation experience would last. The Bible does not say if Jesus knew how long He would have to be in that desert place, that place of desolation, deprivation, and uncertainty.
However, even our relatively small capacity for faith and trust in Jesus can help us endure; we can grow in the assurance that God accompanies us in whatever wilderness or transition we face. If we invite God’s presence and help, we have blessed friendship and guidance through our transitions and complaints as well as in our joys or moments of thanksgiving.
May your “experience of 40” include a clear sense of God’s walking with you in lonely transition times and in your personal desert journey.