I know there’s not much here on Distractifying! yet, but what there is of it has been on the lighter side. You’re beginning to get a slight glimpse at how my mind works (or doesn’t as the case may be). While this post also has it’s lighter side, it also gets down to the seriousness that is my life as a follower of Jesus.
I tend not to call myself Christian as that has come to have a negative connotation in today’s crazy, mixed up world. To follow Jesus is to emulate Him, to strive to live, love, and even lead like Him. I say this in order to state flat out, I do not want this to turn into a religious debate. I’m not a religious person. Religion tends to cause trouble. I simply follow Jesus’ example and do the best I can in life.
If you’re okay with that, read on. And if you have a problem with that, well, it’s okay to skip the posts you don’t want to read about. Scripture will make it’s way in here now and then. But since this is Distractifying, it will not be the entire blog. Nothing will. I’ll be bouncing all over the place, so please, don’t let a little bit of Scripture scare you away. So let me get to it….
“The LORD called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name.” (Isaiah 49:1b, ESV)
What’s in a name? Some think it nonsense, but some see great significance in names and their meaning. In ancient times, names were given that represented (or ended up representing) personality traits. Names tended to call out the good, or the bad in people. For instance, Jacob in the Old Testament was a deceiver, lying and cheating his brother out of his birthright as the eldest son. It was a fitting name for him. After many years of striving and struggling with others to gain both wealth and prominence, he has an ultimate showdown with God and finally realizes that it’s more important to be blessed by God. And that blessing is achieved by surrendering to God, not fighting Him. It took one final, all night wrestling match for Jacob to finally figure this out and accept the God of his father, Isaac, as his own God as well. At the end of this struggle, Jacob is given a new name, Israel, which means “he strives with God.”
In the New Testament, Simon became known as Peter, “the rock.” There are many examples throughout the Bible, of names being changed to reflect new demeanors as people came to know God.
Growing up, I hated my name. If you had any idea how many times I had to endure people singing, “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” … And any of you who know me, DON’T YOU DARE! I will hit you!! Anyway, like I said, I never liked my name at all. When I began following Jesus and reading about all the people in the Bible getting their name changed, I got very excited. I figured it was finally time to get rid of the name I’d disliked for decades.
I waited and waited for my new name from the LORD. It didn’t come. I had someone tell me once, (and only once!), that I made them think of Hephzibah, which means “my delight is in her.” It’s from Isaiah 62:4, “You shall no more be termed Forsaken [Azubah], and your land shall no more be termed Desolate [Shemamah], but you shall be called My Delight is in Her [Hephzibah], and your land Married [Beulah]; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married.” [The names in brackets I put in to show what the names were that were being described. It was easier to do it this way than to figure out how to do footnotes. People don’t want to read things with footnotes anyway.] Anyway, as beautiful as the thought is for the name Hephzibah, I think I’ll go ahead and stick with Bonnie, thank you very much!
And when you consider my Dad’s choices for names, Bonnie is really not all that bad. His picks were Bertha or Brunhilda. So I’d pretty much given up on name changes. But with God, you never know.
One Sunday I was standing in the atrium before church, and a friend came up to me and shoulder bumped me as she said, “Hey Beautiful [Bonnie], how ya doin’?”
A voice reverberated through my head, “You are aptly named. I gave it to you from the beginning.” I burst into tears.
God named me Beautiful from the very beginning, as I was being formed in my mother’s womb. There is no name change required. He just needed me to come to that realization.
So from that point on, I have absolutely loved my name. But NO! You still can’t sing that song to me!