Ah! Interesting!
He’d be 85 if he were still living. 
7-Up
Don’t look at me that way-Y’all took all the good ones!
You could’ve had the film SE7EN but noooooooooo…
Seven Sacraments
Seven of Nine
I bought it at the 7-Eleven
Seven Deadly Sins
Seven Virtues
You’re right, they took all the good ones
Not really.
Seven matriarchs and patriarchs in the bible. (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebekah, Leah & Rachel).
Interesting speculation, but Tim’s age is not mentioned in the book.
Note that Dickens originally wrote “ten” years had passed since Marley’s death, then crossed it out and wrote “seven”. You can make it out in a facsimile of page 5 of the original manuscript. Here’s a link where you can see it, but the site seems a bit dodgy, so I’ve spoilered it. I didn’t have any problems, but use at your own risk.
7 wonders of the world
The number may be arbitrary, but the answer to “Why now?” is still that this is Tim’s last Christmas, unless he gets help. Help won’t come without a radical change in his father’s circumstance, which won’t come without a change of heart for Scrooge.
Snow White and the Magnificent Seven Dwarves.
“To remove the curse, run around the Seven Hills of Rome seven times!”
Seven come eleven.
Pretty good, Rivkah, pretty good.
Is it definitively written somewhere that this Christmas will be Tiny Tim’s last Christmas unless something is done?
The Ghost of Christmas Present said that if these shadows are not changed, not another one of my family will see the boy alive(paraphrased).
This may seem like a hijack, but I think it’s relevant to the question.
It helps to keep in mind that the entire story is told from the POV of Scrooge. It’s not a first-person narration, but everything happens in his presence (or is in his personal history). In other words, it’s very easy to treat the events as a product of Scrooge’s mind. (A lot of movies and theater productions get this wrong, showing events that do not happen in his presence.) If the personal epiphanies are a product of Scrooge’s own mind and the result of his miserable existence, the real question would be, “Why are the date and the seven years important to Scrooge?”
Of course, someone is going to say, “That’s not right. Scrooge recognizes his nephew’s wife, knows some things he would only know if the Spirits actually transported him, etc.” I’ll disagree, but that’s why we have threads to discuss such things.
Well, in the Torah, seven years was the length of a debt. Debts were cancelled every seven years. That law did not apply in England, but it was probably something Scrooge was aware of.
Just trying to think why the number might have been significant to Scrooge.
Surely he was aware of Tiny Tim, though. Maybe it had registered in his brain somewhere that Tim was looking worse lately.
<hijack>Mannheim Steamroller’s Fresh Aire 7. (Which has 12 tracks 
, but at least the titles are all about seven.)</hijack>
I agree with Rivkah’s point, though. The dramatic “why now” is tied to Tiny Tim’s failing health. Even if Scrooge had never laid eyes on the lad, the boy’s father may have given out hints of concern that Scrooge would have picked up on. (If only to assess how much of a nuisance Bob Cratchit was going to be about time off if the boy dies.)
As to “why seven”, seven is the mystical lucky number. The whole story is supernatural, so supernatural numbers resonate. The Sabbath Year Rivkah mentions resonates along with it – a year to liberate slaves and forgive debts and rest the fields. I don’t know if Victorian English would have recognized it – I’m not sure how prevalent Old Testament literacy was – but it is a part of the cultural background of the whole supernatural thing.