Operating System

1 Corinthians 2:1–16

Recommended Reading: Proverbs 1:1–7; 2:1–22; 4:1–27

Do you stay up on New Year’s Eve to wait for the clock to strike midnight? If you do, you probably don’t care that much about when the New Year begins in places like Fiji or Auckland, New Zealand. However, you probably cared a bit more on December 31, 1999, as TV cameras captured the stroke of midnight in those locations to see whether the world had avoided the Y2K disaster. As clocks struck 12:00, 12:01, 12:02 in each time zone around the world, we all breathed a collective sigh of relief that televisions still functioned, nuclear power plants hadn’t failed and cars continued running.

Remember the craziness that preceded Y2K? Companies and governments spent billions of dollars to hire software programmers to pore over and correct millions of lines of computer code. All because of a looming catastrophe if computers were to misread the last two zeroes in the year 2000 as 1900.

The Big Minute

Rabbi Shaul Rosenblatt

Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:16)

When God informs Moses of the tenth and final plague, he tells him that it will happen at "approximately" midnight. Rashi, the great commentator, asks why God was not more exact. Doesn't God have a watch? He answers that timekeeping was an inexact science in those days. Were God to have said "exactly" midnight, people might have confused their timings and thought that it was God, and not them, who had made a mistake. To avoid potential confusion, God says "approximately."

At first glance, this answer makes no sense. Let's put it in context for a moment. God has brought ten miraculous plagues upon Egypt - blood, locust with iron teeth, hail with fire inside, darkness that is palpable... These miracles are about to climax with the slaying of every firstborn Egyptian in a single moment. And God is worried that because someone might not have an atomic clock, he will think that God's not as cool as he says He is?!