Merry day after Christmas! I hope you had a lovely day, fully present to Jesus and loved ones around you.
Friday I posted on different attitudes towards canceling church on Christmas day, including my own whine well reasoned argument against John signing our family up to lead in worship. Well the troops rallied and it was a delightful day. Since I’m following the advice of my blog “mentor”, Jon Acuff and taking a little break this week, I thought I’d just post what I shared in church yesterday.
Twenty-six years ago this past week John and I were waiting for a baby to arrive. It was Advent so we were waiting to celebrate the birth of Jesus. But we were also expecting our first baby.
I was 8 months pregnant and like all expectant parents we were discussing names. We couldn’t agree, but it wasn’t for lack of resources.
We had a baby book with the meanings of names.
And even a Christian version with Bible verses for each name’s meaning.
And then we had, you know… the whole BIBLE, with all those holy names to choose from. But…we had…issues.
I had been an elementary school teacher which meant we had to nix any names that had belonged to problem kids I had had in class. I used to love the name Jeremy until I had a third grade “Jeremy” who was worse than Dennis the Menace and Osama bin Laden. So Jeremy was out. And so was Alex. And Michael.
Then we had trouble agreeing on the type of name. I like unusual names, and would have no problem naming a child Zechariah (my cousin has kids named Cosmo and Zappa so he’d feel right at home). But John likes the classics (and the name “John” in particular), so there was no way we could agree on a boy’s name that was acceptable. It’s a good thing we had a girl.
When Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph didn’t have to have the “What shall we name him” conversation fraught with the potential disagreements. I know there are a lot of downsides, to being the parents of the Messiah, but this is a perk. They had an ANGEL show up and say, “Here’s the deal. You’re gonna have a baby and I want you to name Him Jesus. Got that? Jesus. Not Joe.”
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