Several years ago now, my husband and I were "lay counseling" some friends of ours that were having marital problems. The couple had made a decision to pray for each other at 11:11 every night, no matter what was going on, and had faithfully done so through hell and high water over the last several months.
This particular night, a confession had just been made that, in the natural realm of things, seemed to have put a "happy ending" desperately out of reach. Neither my husband nor I could come up with anything comforting or encouraging to say, and we all just sat there in a state of hopelessness and despair.
It was about that time that our children yelled that we needed to go!! We yelled back, "What time is it?" You could have heard a pin drop as the Holy Spirit entered the room at the children's answer of "11:11!". The countenance of my dear friend's face changed, and hope crept back into the room and the relationship.
Now for those of you who don't have goose bumps, let me ask you what the statistical probability of it being exactly 11:11 at night is, of the children looking at some clock at precisely that time, and furthermore, not saying something like, "It's after 11:00!" When you add to that the unlikelihood of us to being there that late in the first place, you have what I like to call a "fingerprint" from God Almighty. The God that knows the beginning from the end and directs our steps and our lives in such a fashion, that I am constantly amazed at His devine timeliness and ability to make all things new.
Since that period in time, the Lord has used the time 11:11 to encourage my friend, myself and my daughter, in particular, at times of despair, discouragement, or distress. My friend saw this time again right after her husband had fallen off of a ladder and had to be rushed to the emergency room. I looked at my watch as I was walking around the lake one day, in a mood of disappointment over something that I am very sure seemed big at the time, but which I can't remember now, to see 11:11. My daughter was recently crying and praying for a friend that had collapsed with a bleed in his brain at school, his life hanging in the balance, when she looked at the clock to see 11:11. I have seen this time on the clock a couple of times when I was worried about my son's high school sports "career". And these are only examples of the times that I can actually recount the incidents surrounding God putting his "fingerprints" on our lives by showing us 11:11 at precisely the exact moment that we needed to see it. There are many more. But that is for later posts.
