Statistics mean a lot more when you become one.
We’re bombarded with so many statistics on such a regular basis that it’s pretty easy to forget that these cold numbers represent warm human beings.
Take the facts and figures related to the economy, for example. Volatile stock market gains and losses, new jobs, businesses going under, companies laying off workers, businesses hiring workers.
It’s up, it’s down, it’s worse, it’s better, it’s hopeful, it’s depressing. Yada, yada, yada.
Except that it’s not “yada, yada, yada” to me anymore. It’s personal because my husband’s job evaporated a few weeks ago.
Joe went in one morning and came home that afternoon toting his coffeemaker and a few personal items from his office. Poof! Just like that, he was tossed into a new statistical category.
Now me, I’m used to being unemployed. I stay quite busy, but I haven’t had a “real job” in several years. But this is new territory for my computer-software developing husband.
We’re not thinking Joe will be out of work for long, but the truth is, we really don’t know. What we do know is that God has always met our needs and we believe He’ll continue to do that.
Actually, I’m kind of hoping this hiatus lasts until my “honey do” list has a few more items checked off.
Employed or unemployed, most of us don’t like to think of ourselves as statistics. We don’t like our lives to be boiled down to a few impersonal number bones.
But that’s the way of our world, what with so many professionals out there determined to file us all into tidy compartments. (Politicians, insurance underwriters and marketing professionals, just to name a few.)
When I think about it, I realize I’m probably stuffed into all kinds of statistical cubbyholes.
For example, I’m one of the 50.6 percent of the U.S. population that is female; one of the 72.4 percent who, in the last census, identified themselves as “white”; and one of the 11.9 percent of those white Americans whose ancestors came from Ireland.
I’m right-handed (70-90 percent of adults), married (51 percent), have been diagnosed with melanoma (two percent of women), and, as baffling as it may sound, I don’t color my hair (25 percent of American women).
I could go on. How many people in the world have freckles? Drive Toyotas? Are middle children? Have hazel eyes? Don’t smoke? Have a body mass index of … well, never mind.
Our world is obsessed with how many, how often, and how much.
If we’re not careful, we can assume God is too. His church often seems to be.
How many members do you have? How big is your budget? What percentage of your church members attend Sunday School? How many came down front to “get saved” during your service?
We measure ourselves by ourselves and imagine God sizes us up that way, too.
I’m pretty sure He doesn’t.
After all, He chose tiny Israel to be the hub of His earthly plan. He reprimanded King David for conducting a prideful census in Israel. He commanded Gideon to whittle down the Hebrew army so that everyone would know the victory was God’s doing.
Jesus initially chose just a few disciples and said, “… the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Matthew 7:14).
“Small, narrow, few”—it seems God cares less about “how many” or “how big” and more about “who”—who comes to Him, who believes Him, who trusts Him.
Our world is full of statistics, but in the end only one will matter: how many followed Christ.
Count me in.