The 3:16 Project: Introduction

I haven't written anything on my blog for years. Initially this blog was to promote my books but I've got posts about every other subject under the sun here now, from running to my late cat to drag queens.

I think now I will use my blog as somewhere for self-expression. An online journal where I can put out into the world the things I want to say without the expectation that anyone will actually ever read it. A brain-dump, if you like.

One of the things I think I need to publish is my 3:16 experience. 

A few years ago I went through a period of several months where the numbers 3:16 kept appearing. I'd wake up in the night and check the time and it would be 3:16 (and no, I didn't have any kind of alarm set). I'd check my watch in the afternoon and it would be 3:16. My new favourite song was 3 minutes and 16 seconds long. My habitual locker at the gym, when I finally looked at the number, was number 316. My best time on the card game app I like is 3 minutes and 16 seconds. That number was just popping up randomly everywhere in my life, often several times a day.

As a Christian I wasn't as freaked out by this as you might think. Evidently God was trying to tell me something, and had chosen this way to get the message across. The puzzle was, what message? Obviously I already knew and had fully embraced, memorised and taken to heart what is probably the most famous Bible verse: John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him shall not die but have eternal life." What was I missing?

I confided in a friend who gave me the answer. "Maybe it's not John 3:16. Maybe it's another 3:16 elsewhere in the Bible. Maybe it's all of them. There's a message for me in one of those 3:16s, or perhaps in the combination of them.

As soon as I resolved to read and study all 66-ish 3:16s in the scriptures the weird 3:16s stopped happening. I'd wake in the night at 2:20, my new favourite song was 4 minutes and 12 seconds long, and I beat my time on the card game.

So that was all well and good, but then I forgot. Covid happened. A promotion at work happened. Life happened.

Last week I was staying with the same friend who had unravelled the meaning behind the repeated numbers. We were listening to a sermon given by her pastor in which he quoted 2 Timothy 3:16. And simultaneously we both remembered that I was supposed to be looking into the meaning of these verses. So I have resolved to do that, and will record my thoughts and findings here.