Happy Pi Day!!! Some of you think that I spelled that wrong. But all the mathematical geniuses posing as lovable geeks and nerds know exactly what today is all about. Pi “is the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter. While the idea of pi has been known for nearly 4000 years, accurately calculating it has been something of slightly more recent mathematical development. By 2000 BC, the Egyptians and Babylonians accurately used the constant to build. Mathematicians such as Archimedes, Fibonacci, François Viète, Adriaan van Roomen, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz all calculated pi by various methods. However, in 1706, Welsh mathematician William Jones introduced the Greek letter π to represent the ratio of a circle’s circumference; pi.”1
Why is today pi day? Think about the date: March 14th. If we write the date differently, today is 3.14 which is the first three most recognizable digits to the value of pi. Pi, though, is a value that can go on forever and will never find a conclusion. How far has anyone gotten in their calculations? “Google confirmed it was able to compute Pi to 31.4 trillion decimal places, setting a new Guinness World Record.”2
You could celebrate today by doing a bunch of math problems using pi or going to an academic quiz bowl. It would be a lot more fun, though, to celebrate with a slice of
apple or cherry pi(e), a slice or two of a pizza pi(e), go on a pi scavenger hunt where you have to find 314 in order, or you could host a pi(e) eating contest of your very own. If none of that is appealing, how about contemplating this devotional.
Our takeaway from National Pi Day is that it is an infinitesimal number whose end can never be discovered. It has a beginning, but it seems to have no end. Though the analogy isn’t totally accurate because God has no beginning, pi reminds us that God has no end and we can never figure Him out.
Isaiah 40:28 asks, “Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.” In Isaiah 55:8-9, God declares, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. (9) For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Job succinctly puts it this way in Job 36:26. “Behold, God is great, and we know him not, neither can the number of his years be searched out.”
Our God has no beginning or end, and we can only know what God allows us to know about Him. Thankfully, we can always say that there is so much more to learn.
As for pi, why anyone would even care to know more than 3.14 is beyond me. Those three digits suffice my curiosity! If you want more, have at it! And have a Happy Pi Day.
1https://www.nationaldaycalendar.com/national-day/national-pi-day-march-14
2https://techxplore.com/news/2019-03-pi-trillion-decimals-google-day.html
Images are taken from https://pixabay.com/, https://www.pexels.com/, or https://unsplash.com/images. According to the websites, they are Royalty Free and free to be used for our purposes.
