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Not being a numbers person, I never noticed before what a big deal the Bible makes about numbers. But lately it's been hitting me: For whatever reason, God seems to care about quantifying certain details, and he makes a point of calling those things to our attention.

In some cases, I suspect the numbers are there for historical purposes—they offer credibility and context to biblical accounts. Cases in point: the number of days it rained while Noah & Co. were on their ark cruise (40), the number of years Methuselah lived (969), the number of feet Nehemiah and his crew repaired on the Jerusalem wall (1,500), the number of people who were shipwrecked with Paul (276).

But in other cases, I have to wonder if the reason for the numbers is more for spiritual purposes than factual ones. Is it because God knows about our messy relationship with integers? Let's face it, even English majors like me can become slaves to numbers and statistics. With little warning, we can find ourselves consumed by them: the number on the bathroom scale, the number on our bank statement, the number of vacation days left this year, the number of friends on our myspace page.

And as easily as numbers can become an obsession, they can also bully us. In the last week, I was accosted by two statistics, which alternatingly strike me as disconcerting or panic-inducing, depending on the day (and my hormone levels). The first, from the February '07 issue of National Geographic, is this: There are 40,000 more single women than men in Chicago. And lest you think that's just my problem for living in the Windy City, the same is true for the majority of the Midwest and East Coast. (Admittedly, there are a precious few cities, including San Francisco and Seattle, where single males outnumber single women.) The second, from a recent Barna Research Group study, is the alarming statistic that there are 11 to 13 million more Christian women in the United States than there are Christian men. Yikes—not good news for any woman looking for a godly, eligible man east of the Rockies.

Now, we all know statistics can lie—or at the very least they don't tell the whole story. Most of us have heard about the now-infamous Newsweek article titled "The Marriage Crunch," which was featured in the June 2, 1986, issue. The article made the bold claim that a single 40-year-old woman is "more likely to be killed by a terrorist" than to get married. (Newsweek has since retracted and apologized for this article, and last year they published a follow-up on the women featured in the original article—most of whom have since gotten married.)

Nevertheless, statistics like that have a way of decentering my emotional equilibrium. Maybe—back to the Bible's penchant with numbers—that's why God emphasizes a new kind of math.

Take Gideon, for example. He lived in a time when the Israelites were clearly the underdogs. The fierce attacks by the Midianites had them cowering in caves, and the whole nation was basically on the brink of starvation. Enter Gideon. He seemed to be an average sort of guy, with his share of questions and doubts, but God called him to lead an uprising against the Midianites anyway. Gideon finally agreed and rounded up his military recruits: a whopping 22,000 soldiers!

But God's response at that point is startling—especially for those of us who find consolation in the strength-in-numbers mentality. Instead of congratulating Gideon on his impressive recruiting skills, he told Gideon, "You have too many warriors with you" (Judges 7:2). So in the face of the enemy's massive army, which was "like a swarm of locusts" (7:12), God told Gideon to systematically reduce the size of his troops! The number of Israelite soldiers dwindled from 22,000 to 10,000, and then from 10,000 to 300. Only then did God say it was time to go to battle.

The numbers were impossibly stacked against the Israelites … but maybe that was the point. That way when victory came, they couldn't claim they'd done it on their own strength—they'd have no choice but to acknowledge God's hand in beating all human odds.

And God's numerical miracles didn't stop in the BC era. There's the classic New Testament account of the 5,000-plus people in need of supper after listening to Jesus preach all day. After some quick mental math, the disciple Philip noted incredulously, "Even if we worked for months, we wouldn't have enough money to feed them!" (John 6:7). The discovery of a meager five loaves and two fish wouldn't so much as make a dent in the cumulative hunger of a crowd that size. Even nonmathematical types like me know there's no way to divide 5 and 2 by 5,000 and have enough to go around … and certainly not to end up with a remainder of 12! But that's exactly what happened—some supernatural math, and along with it, a reminder that God is bigger than the earthbound constraints we tend to put on him.

So if the God we serve is the same one who brought victory for an against-all-odds army, and the same one who was undaunted by a staggering people-to-food ratio, maybe he's big enough to handle the scary numbers in our lives too. Sure, I still don't like those singleness stats. And just because God can overcome those alarming numbers in my life is no guarantee that he will. But it's grounding to remember that the numbers that threaten and consume us are no match for God; in fact, he has a history of laughing in the face of the most daunting odds.

Which reminds me of a term from my trigonometry days: sine. I've long since forgotten the mathematical meaning, but I do have some context for sign. Maybe that's what those numbers are all about, after all: not mere historical markers, but signs. Signs that God isn't scared by statistics. That he can't be reduced to a formula. And best of all, that he's greater than any number thrown at us.

I don't know about you, but that's my kind of math.

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