Here are some perhaps amusing examples, not necessarily intended as deep kabbalistic interpretations. Gematria is often used just for simple homiletic purposes, not for the sake of revealing deep mysteries of the universe.
- OK, one about everyone's favorite, pi: the Bible, in 1 Kings 7, verse 23, talks about a "sea" (a big bath or cauldron, presumably), that is given to be ten cubits across and thirty cubits around. This is obviously an approximation, if you know your geometry: it's really 10*pi cubits, or almost 1-1/2 cubits longer around. Ah, but the word used for "circumference" in the text is "qav," literally "line." And as sometimes happens in the Bible, it is spelled unusually (spelled one way, but the traditional reading is another. It's a Masoretic thing). The word wound up with an extra letter at the end, which we ignore when reading it. But it affects the gematria of course. Without the extra letter, (and without the prefixed conjunction, which we're ignoring entirely), the word "qav" has the value 106. The extra "heh" at the end adds five to that, giving a total of 111. Now, 111/106 times the 30 cubits yields ~31.415 cubits. Not bad! That's approximating pi with 333/106, which is I think the best rational approximation with a denominator less than 113. Bleah, so close! 355/113 is so much better! Coincidence? You decide. Possibly. Not necessarily less interesting because of that.
- A favorite around the Passover seder table: God is referred to in some prayers as "Hamakom," literally something like "the place"; often translated as "The Omnipresent." Why should "makom/place" refer to God? Well, take God's name, YHWH. Take each of those letters, square them (since a "place" is an area, so squared units), and you get 100+25+36+25=186, which is the same value as "makom/place": 40+100+6+40. Contrived? Yeah. Actually not as much so as some others I've seen that are meant more seriously. You can get anything you want from numbers with enough work.
- Another old Passover chestnut (my dad in particular likes collecting and inventing these). The Bible says in Genesis 15:13 that God promised Abraham that his children would be enslaved for 400 years. And yet if you do the math and compare years that are given (I have to find sources for this), it was only 210 years that they were enslaved. The difference? Well, God started counting from the birth of Isaac, of whom it is said that he could be called Abraham's "seed" (not Ishmael, though he was older, according to a verse). And so the Passover Haggadah praises God for having "considered the end" when redeeming the slaves. What end? Well, the word they used for "end" (OK, this isn't Biblical) is "qetz", which has the value of 190: God reckoned the 190 years in to reduce the 400 to 210. Earth-shattering? No. But fun.
I've got scads of them, here and there (my dad collects them, I said). I'm not even sure these are the best examples. But you might find them fun.