There's A Lot In The Number Forty

Particularly since that's the number of days my current office will remain open.


(Technically twenty-nine days since Fast Cash is closed on weekends and we'll be closed next Monday for Memorial Day.) I don't think I will get in trouble admitting that now since I got word myself in person from my boss last week, and I'm already putting in applications elsewhere in Minot. As I'm writing this I have four with one potential employer -- one as a courier, two for office assistant positions, and one for a dietary aide -- and one for a management position with another. I put up an unspoken prayer request last week regarding a major change in my life by the end of June, and if you're wondering what that was now I'm telling you.


I'm not in panic mode. Yet.


I'm confident that even in a weaker economy that Minot -- heck, than the entire state of North Dakota has had -- since the oil boom went bust that finding and holding onto a full-time job is not that difficult. Just as I say when I tell people the story of how Martha and I met online (I lived in Florida and she's been in North Dakota her whole life) and they may or may not say they've heard or seen or experienced how a relationship that started there did not work for them but it's implied somehow, like any relationship it will work and grow as long as the people (in this case, as long as Martha and I) are both committed to lift it up in prayer and commit to make it work.


Ironic how Christians often look down on any meaning to numbers except when we ascribe them.

Forty days and nights the rain fell upon the earth, sparing only Noah and his family and the animals in the ark. Forty days and nights Jesus spent in the wilderness after John baptized Him. Ok, so my own forty days and nights is unlikely to be something people read about and draw spiritual lessons from thousands of years from now -- but it's cathartic for me right now. But the key is that I can't just be standing still; of course I'm not anxious nor should I be about anything or anyone I commit to prayer ... I just have moments I wonder how committed I really am to what I pray about when a few minutes after I do so I find myself shouting as I did at Sarah and Jeffrey this morning.


It's the last week of school here, and I get that they're on edge.


I just need to be less so.


David