One to the Power of One

Mathematics is a magically complex, intriguing mechanism. The number of fascinating math tricks is endless, and through its relationship with science, numbers can now explain almost anything: how fast, how high, how far, how long in both microscopic and galactic scales.
 
Numbers now help us fathom the universe, such as how far to Jupiter or a distant nebulae or how large a particular plant cell. I can visit my doctor and she’ll read me the numbers that describe my health: cholesterol levels (both HDL and LDL), liver function, bone density, glucose, heart rate, vision, and of course weight.
 
I read the news and watch the stock market go up and down, weather forecast up and down, gas prices up and down, presidential approval ratings up and down, surf at  Waikiki and Waimea Bay up and down.
 
My computer screen top menu tells me how much battery charge I have left, cell phone how many minutes I’ve talked, calendar how many days until, cash register how much I owe, YouTube screen how many seconds until the end, Facebook how many friends, USDA nutritional box how many calories.
 
Numbers, numbers, numbers. Mathematicians and scientists love them as a language all its own. Musicians rely upon them for rhythm. Chefs employ them for proportions, heating requirements, cooking times. And what parent has not counted to 10 as a warning of things to come?
 
But the most important number? I thinks it’s one. One. 1. Uno, Une. Ichi, 一 .
 
One is the basic unit upon which all other calculations are based. One is the plumb line that every other number, gargantuan or fractional, multiple or decimal, is measured against, compared with, understood.
 
And One is the number that God cares about most.
 
Of course, the Bible is replete with numbers. From the beginning, in the beginning, the writer of Genesis describes the number of days God took to create the world…starting with Day 1. And when He created man, God started with one. Then He added to the one, saying, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."  [Gen 2:18]
 
We read in the Bible about Noah and God’s command for him to bring two of every kind of animal on the ark, with specific dimensions: “450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.” We know how long it rained during The Flood—40 days and 40 nights—and we know how old Noah was when the rain began falling: 600 years old, and that it commenced on the seventeenth day of the second month of the year.
 
The Book of Numbers has its share of digits, and scripture gives the exact dimensions for the Temple that King Solomon built. And let’s not forget that in order to locate all these scripture passages, we rely upon numbers, chapter and verse, meticulously added in the second millennium A.D.
 
And yet, the most important number among all of these remains one. God cares about the one, the individual among the masses. He selects the one to accomplish specific tasks, singling out Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Ruth, David, Daniel, Mary, John the Baptist, Paul. Jesus tells of God the shepherd leaving the 99 to find the one lost sheep and says, “there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
 
Who is the “one” that Jesus talks of? To which one did Jesus come to show the love of God? Who is the one that Jesus died for? And to which one has He given the Holy Spirit?
 
I am that one. You are that one. Every individual person, every one is that one.
 
Moreover, Jesus did not come just for the one, but he came to make us one—that is, to make us whole, a complete integer. He came to restore us so that we would not be a fraction of the person that God created us to be. God subtracts nothing from us but adds until we are absolutely full. Jesus came to take the crumbling parts of who we are, patch us back together, and regenerate us in God’s Holy Spirit into something, Someone, more whole, complete, integrated, fully functioning, more wonderful than we could ever be by ourselves.
 
The Power of One is one raised to the One power – God’s power that makes us more fully one than we could humanly be without Him. We are stronger for The One. We are more humble for the one. Raised by God to stand tall in the shadow of The One, each one of us has purpose, meaning, value that can never be torn from us. Nor can we be replicated. God’s made only one of us, and that pleases Him to see us come as we are—come one by one to Him.
 
In a world fraught with numbers, counting, calculating, comparing, it would do us good to stop daily, every day, to consider The One who loves us and knows who we are apart from others. We need to know that God sees us, one among the many. And that’s the only thing that counts.

Posted via email from 40 Day Fast