Feb. 27th, 2011: 40
Last night as I was laying in bed the number 40 struck me. As many people know women are pregnant for 40 weeks. In the Bible the number 40 is repeated several times; it rained 40 days and 40 nights when God wanted to cleanse the world and start over (Gen. 7:13), the Israelites spent 40 years in the wilderness (Ex. 16:35), Jesus fasted for 40 days in the wilderness before starting his public ministry (Matt. 4:1-2), and Jesus' ascension to heaven occurs 40 days after the Resurrection (Acts 1:3). These are only some of the examples in the Bible where the number 40 is referred to. While our Catholic faith teaches us that numbers in the Bible should not be taken literally but symbolically, it's an interesting comparison, for me, that the number 40 in the Bible could have some connection to the number of weeks a woman is pregnant. In the Bible the number 40 denotes a time period when God made major changes so that transformation could occur. Usually it's a time period of