In his “Confessions” St Augustine mulled over the meaning of time and eternity. He passionately desired to discern their meanings. Augustine believed, as did everyone in his era, that the sun rotates around the earth. For a while he judged that time could be measured by the duration of the sun’s journey from east to east around the earth in a day, but this did not satisfy his quest for a definition of time.

When God told the Israelites that they would not enter the Promised Land for forty more years, He said, For forty years-one year for each of the forty days you explored the land- you will suffer for your sins and know what it is like to have me against you.”

(Numbers 14:34).

God chose forty years as years of remembrance. He chose the time so that all the people would be reminded of Him and of their connection to Him daily.

Centuries later God would say of a disobedient Israel, I am now going to allure her, I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. . . there she will respond as in the days of her youth, as on the day she came up out of Egypt. (Hosea 2:14).

The forty years of “suffering” in the wilderness were a time of bonding with God. They were a time of allowing a whole generation to grow old in the knowledge of their God, and for the younger generation to prepare for the fulfillment of God’s promise to them of occupying the Promised Land. What was delivered as punishment worked for the people as a time of growing and maturing in their relationship to God. Forty years of suffering became a time of blessing.

ST. Augustine worried and wondered over the concept of time until he didn’t. You, my Father, are eternal. But I am divided between time gone by and time to come, and its course is a mystery to me. My thoughts, the intimate life of my soul, are torn this way and that in the havoc of change. And so it will be until I am purified and melted by the fire of your love. . . (Confessions, book xi, 29).

During Lent we don’t have to wonder about the nature of time or eternity. We have forty days to experience forty years of the manna in Scripture every morning if we choose. When Augustine tasted that manna he received a measure of the fire of God’s love, and knew that it would be sufficient for the intimate life of his soul.

Love in Him,

Prue