Today is 9/26/26. For most people, it is simply another Saturday on the calendar. For me, it feels like one of those rare moments when a date catches up with a story I have been living for decades. I have always had a strange affection for the numbers 9 and 26, noticing 9:26 on the clock, 926 on an odometer, a gate number, a receipt, a mile marker, or some random sequence that would mean absolutely nothing to anyone else. I do not believe the numbers control my life, predict my future, or carry power on their own. I do believe God knows how He built me, knows that I have always loved numbers, patterns, markets, and signals, and sometimes uses 9 and 26 as a quiet nod that gets my attention.
It began on the ice long before any of this had theology attached to it. Number 9 was my high school hockey number, 26 became my college number, and when I played professionally I returned to 9. Those numbers were stitched onto jerseys before they were ever stitched into a business name. They belonged to locker rooms, early mornings, hard practices, competition, sacrifice, teammates, disappointment, discipline, and the kind of preparation no one applauds because no one is watching yet. I wore the numbers before I understood the pattern.
Then came trading, where numbers became more than identity. They became language. A meaningful part of my career was spent using the Ichimoku Cloud, a Japanese technical framework designed to help traders understand trend, momentum, equilibrium, support, resistance, and time. Its standard construction uses 9 periods for the Tenkan-sen, 26 for the Kijun-sen, a Chikou span shifted 26 periods backward, and a cloud projected 26 periods forward. For years, I stared at markets through a framework built around the same two numbers I had once worn on my back.
That still makes me smile because the connection was not engineered after the fact. I did not choose Ichimoku because I wore 9 and 26. I used it because it worked for the way I thought about markets, rhythm, time, and equilibrium. Yet there they were again. Nine and twenty-six, sitting quietly in front of me while I learned some of the hardest lessons markets can teach: patience, discipline, humility, and the fact that being early and being wrong can feel remarkably similar for longer than expected.
Then came Amazon. Jeff Bezos was 26 when he became a vice president at Bankers Trust and soon entered D. E. Shaw, the intersection of finance, technology, mathematics, and emerging opportunity that eventually helped shape the road to Amazon. Years later, Amazon and AWS became one of the most formative chapters of my own life, teaching me ownership, long-term thinking, customer obsession, high standards, and the willingness to build things that may look obvious only after someone actually builds them. And I find it fascinating that Bezos’ original 1997 Shareholder Letter lays out exactly 9 fundamental management and decision-making principles under “It’s All About the Long Term.” Amazon never assigned mystical meaning to those numbers, and neither do I, but I cannot ignore how often they seem to appear around the chapters that shaped me most.
Then Bitcoin entered the story. Satoshi Nakamoto’s original white paper is 9 pages long, and the opening sentence of the abstract contains 26 words laying out the central idea of peer-to-peer electronic cash without requiring a financial institution in the middle. I am not suggesting Satoshi designed the paper around my favorite numbers. That would require a level of self-importance even Bitcoin Twitter might struggle to sustain. For me, it was another nod from God.
Somewhere along the way, 926 Ventures became the name under which I built, advised, invested, learned, failed, restarted, and eventually incubated much of the thinking that became Kingdom Bitcoin. At that point, 9 and 26 no longer felt like branding. They felt like continuity. Hockey had taught discipline. Trading had taught pattern recognition and humility. Amazon taught ownership and long-term building. Bitcoin taught me to question the architecture beneath money itself. The numbers had followed me through every one of those rooms.
And then Scripture deepened the meaning.
The Bible never hands us a numerology dictionary saying that every appearance of nine means one fixed thing. I want to be very clear about that. Yet Christians have long reflected on 9 as a number associated with completion and finality, and the biblical echoes are beautiful. Jesus cried out from the Cross at the 9th hour before giving up His spirit, and Galatians names 9 qualities in the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
9 also speaks to me as a number of birthing. Human life ordinarily develops for roughly 9 months before something hidden becomes visible, which has become a personal picture of how God often works in my life. He plants something, forms it quietly, matures it beyond what I can see, and then brings it into a new season. Scripture itself uses that imagery when God asks in Isaiah, “Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?” The lesson is not that 9 guarantees a new beginning. It is that God often does His deepest work before anyone else can see it.
26 carries an even more profound biblical resonance. In traditional Hebrew gematria, the letters of the sacred name YHWH carry the values Yod 10, Heh 5, Vav 6, and Heh 5, totaling 26. I do not believe that makes 26 divine or that seeing it means God has issued me an instruction. When a number already woven through my life also points me toward the name of Yahweh, I receive that as a reminder of who the story belongs to.
Then there is 9:26 itself. For years, I have instinctively noticed that exact time on the clock, but its deepest meaning may have been sitting openly in Scripture all along. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9:26, “Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly.” An athlete understands that. So does a trader, a builder, a husband, a father, and anyone who has learned the difference between movement and purpose.
Samuel gives me the final image. He raises the Ebenezer and declares, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” The stone had no power. It simply caused people to remember the God who did. Samuel later becomes the prophet who anoints David, and David’s line ultimately points forward to Jesus, the true King. If you have watched House of David on Prime Video, which dramatizes that story, there is something beautifully full-circle for me about Samuel, David, Amazon, and this strange trail of markers all meeting in the same reflection.
That is how I think about 9 and 26 now. I believe God sometimes uses them as one of His personal ways of getting my attention because He knows exactly how He built me. They are not idols, instructions, fortune telling, or substitutes for Scripture, prayer, or the Holy Spirit. They are reminders.
When I see 9:26, I hear: do not run aimlessly. When I see 26, I remember Yahweh. When I see 9, I think about completion, fruit, formation, and the Cross.
And today, as the calendar reads 9/26/26, I receive it as my own Ebenezer. Not because the numbers are powerful. Because the God who has carried me through every season is.
Kingdom Principle 👑
God can use the things He wired into us to get our attention, but the marker must never become more important than the One pointing through it.
God gives us memories, milestones, places, people, and sometimes patterns that cause us to stop and remember. The danger begins when we worship the marker rather than the One it points toward. Nine and twenty-six do not determine my destiny, predict my future, or carry supernatural power. For me, they have simply become personal Ebenezers (shoutout Mark Batterson and his DC coffee shop) reminding me that God has been present through chapters I once thought were completely disconnected.
The rink taught discipline. Markets taught humility. Amazon taught ownership and long-term thinking. Bitcoin taught me to question the architecture beneath money. Jesus continues teaching me what all of it is actually for. The Holy Spirit continues asking whether what I build is producing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Prayer 🙏
Heavenly Father, thank You for every chapter represented in these two numbers. Thank You for the rink, the trading desk, Amazon and AWS, 926 Ventures, Bitcoin, Kingdom Bitcoin, my family, every success, every failure, and every season where I could not yet see how You were connecting the story. Thank You for the people, lessons, opportunities, corrections, and grace that brought me here.
As I look at 9/26/26, keep my eyes fixed not on numbers but on You. Fill me with the Holy Spirit and let the fruit of the Spirit become more visible in my life with every year You give me. Keep Jesus Christ at the center of everything I build, everything I steward, and everything I become. Let every number, company, investment, accomplishment, and calling ultimately point beyond me and back to You.
Thus far, Lord, You have helped me. Now help me run the rest of the race with purpose. In Jesus’ name, Amen. 🙏📖🏒9️⃣2️⃣6️⃣📈☁️₿🦁🕊️👑