12/12/12

     In our household this unique alignment of repeating numbers was especially significant. While the rarity of this occurrence is obvious to all, being the last calendar date with such repeating digits for this millennium, for us it also is our twentieth anniversary of our wedding. Thus it is not only significant as it draws special attention to the twelves of 12/12/12, but it also embodies the twenty for the fulfillment of our twentieth year together as one in the Lord, 12/12/2012.

      We both included this in our little cards to each other, but my wife designed a graphic that captures the essence of the symbolism beautifully.

     In our discussions throughout that evening, in addition to giving thanks to God for His gift of bringing us together to live as husband and wife, and especially His merciful and continual intervention to keep us from destroying this union so that we are brought together again and again in His love through His never-ending forgiveness, we also noted how this special choice of dates is one that we chose according to what He worked for us as we attempted to find a date when all of our family and friends could be with us on the day of our wedding. In this we acknowledged that we had no idea that He was giving to us also this special date on which our twentieth year of marriage would be marked perfectly by the numerical notation of 12-12-2012.

      This stands as a reminder of how the Lord always works on our behalf even without our awareness, acknowledgment, or even asking. It is a wonderful blessing that the Lord Jesus has given us a common prayer among us where by His command we do acknowledge all things and receive them with thanks, as we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

      Luther gives a wonderful explanation to this petition:

Give us this day our daily bread.   What does this mean?—Answer.      God gives daily bread, even without our prayer, to all wicked men; but we pray in this petition that He would lead us to know it, and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.

What is meant by daily bread?—Answer.      Everything that belongs to the support and wants of the body, such as meat, drink, clothing, shoes, house, homestead, field, cattle, money, goods, a pious spouse, pious children, pious servants, pious and faithful magistrates, good government, good weather, peace, health, discipline, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.

+ + +        If we are willing to see it, the Lord makes His goodness and mercy manifest in everything in our lives, even in something as seemingly tiny as a grouping of repeating numbers. Certainly He does so in our marriages that demonstrate to us His holy union to His bride the Church, and in the manifold blessings poured out to us, the children of that union, through the means of grace administered to us within His everlasting household and especially at His Table. Through this we observe in the clearest way possible how truly good our Father and God is.

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