Time for the standard birthday factoids............

Time for the standard birthday factoids for my oldest brother-in-law.Fifty years! Five decades! Half a century! A twentieth of a millennium! Six hundred months! Two thousand six hundred nine weeks! Eighteen thousand two hundred sixty-three days! 438,312 hours! 26,298,720 minutes! 1,577,923,200 seconds (give or take)!Fifty is the number of the year of jubilee; the wonderful time recorded in Leviticus 25, when all debts are forgiven and all possession returns to its original owner. Every 50th year, after seven sabbath years, the Israelites were to celebrate a year of jubilee. There is no recorded time in the Bible where they actually celebrated it, mind you, but God ordained it to point to our final freedom at His return. We await the true 50th year of jubilee!Similarly, Shavuot, or what Christianity calls Pentecost, happens 50 days after the Sabbath which occurs during Passover, or the Sunday seven weeks after the resurrection. It was then, of course, that the Spirit was poured out upon all flesh and our Lord fulfilled His promise to send the Comforter and dwell with us.So, spiritually, 50 is an important number - the "8th", if you will, after seven sevens. When Jesus walked among the seven candlesticks in Revelation 1, there were seven seven-branched menorahs with Him being the Light in the middle - the 50th.Mathematically, 50 is the smallest number that is the sum of two squares two different ways: 1^2 + 7^2 or 5^2 + 5^2. 1 + 49 = 25 + 25 = 50.The classic geometry right triangle has sides length 3, 4, and 5. The sum of the squares of the sides equals the sum of the squares of the hypotenuse: 3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2. Adding all three squares together gets 9 + 16 + 25 = 50.The moon is approximately one-fiftieth the volume of the Earth.The ancient Sanskrit alphabet, one of the very first that could be called an alphabet and surviving in modern Hindu and Buddhist languages, had 50 letters.Other religions have grabbed onto the significance of 50 as seven sevens + 1. The I Ching uses 50 equal-length sticks; Kabbalah recognizes 50 levels of consciousness; "New Age" has seven chakras in humans with a total of 50 petals; and certain Indian prayer bead rosaries have 50 beads.In the movies, Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore had 50 First Dates.
Happy half a century, Tom. May the next half be even more blessed.- Matt -