Thoughts on Day 40: Life in the Time of Corona

Quarantine. The word literally means “a period of 40 days.”

40. A significant number. Today is day 40 in quarantine or lockdown or “safe at home” for us. 40 days. Like Jesus in the wilderness. Like the time it rained while Noah and his family and all those creatures were on the ark.

I’ve been wondering about this number. It comes up so often in the Bible, but why does our English language have a word for this particular number of days? The word goes all the way back to Italy in the early 1400s. As people attempted to manage and avoid plague, travelers were sometimes required to spend a full 40 days, a quarantino, in isolation to allow for potential infections to incubate and run their course before risking transmission via contact with others in an uninfected area.

Perhaps there’s some epidemiological science behind that. It seems reasonable to think so. But I also think there’s some Creator-inspired psychology behind it. I think of how we started out 40 days ago. Sure, we didn’t like this—didn’t relish or enjoy it—but it felt like something of an adventure, and I for one dive into adventure with vigor. At first. My intuition had told me as far back as early February that something was likely to “go down,” and so I had made a little game with the girls of selecting strategic items to add to our normal weekly grocery shopping. Before there were even rumors of isolation, we had a small surplus store of pasta, peanut butter, beans, rice, applesauce, pet food, and acetominaphen. (Always ridiculed by my daughters about my personal dread of running out of toilet paper, I failed this time to stock up on that precious commodity in advance, however.)

We made some plans about how to address a temporary isolation. Schools sent home student laptops. We baked a little. We pulled out games and a puzzle. We planned movie nights and took youth group to Zoom. We were so going to do this! And we did, without much strain despite the uncertainty for the first two weeks.

And then we felt the restlessness creeping in. We felt the end of our own resolve and resources. Trips that kids were excited about got canceled. That hurt. We got cranky. Moods have stayed pretty good overall, but it is clear that our own bootstraps have grown much, much shorter as the days creep on. There have been a few teary meltdowns (mea culpa—even more than the younger ones here in the household). We miss our friends. We miss our families. We miss sports. We miss church. We miss classrooms and offices and lunches out. We miss the movie theater and the spontaneous errand. We miss… everything.

We’re not hungry. We’re not cold. We’re not even alone. We have each other and we connect with people by text and phone and social media and Zoom. But even so, we know we need something else. It’s not enough. And I think this is where the development of real patience and perseverance and healthy dependency upon someone other than ourselves to sustain our whole-image health has opportunity to get roots and grow… around the 40 day mark. It’s too long for us. We want it to end, now—just as it has the potential to develop something lasting within us. Endurance. Endurance doesn’t come easily. It isn’t born into us. It’s nurtured into us. It doesn’t spring up like a weed but grows like an oak—from something small but lasting, that takes a long time to become mighty.

I think its unlikely to be coincidence that Psalm 40 claims, “I waited patiently for the Lord.” And then, the Psalmist goes on to ask God to “make haste” to deliver him. We hold both truths simultaneously. That’s simply honest.

We’re becoming more aware of our needs beyond the physical. We’re becoming something. We’re becoming.

I don’t want to miss this. I want to welcome it. I want to receive it. Despite all the hardship, I’m trying to open my hand to what this is working in us—individually, as a family, as a community, as a nation, as a world. May there be fruit in the future.