Special Name

[I'm blogging this as preparation for doing the Children's Story at church this weekend.]

Have you ever thought very much about your name? Do you know where your name came from? My names came from my two Dutch grandmothers: Rena, and Maria. But no one ever called me Rena Maria, because I was born with red hair and my dad called me Ginger--which means "red"--even though that name wasn't on my birth certificate or my school records or my passport. My name has been Ginger ever since. And I like red. A lot.

For a long, long time I didn't meet anyone else with a name like mine, a name that means "Red." But now there are some right here in this church!

Many years ago, when I was a little girl and we were on vacation in California, my mom took a job to earn some extra money. There was a doctor's office in Hollywood that needed a doctor for a while, and they signed my mom up to treat patients there. I don't remember how long she worked at that office, because my brother and I weren't paying much attention. We were busy sitting in Grandma's back room watching episodes of Gilligan's Island.

So my mom worked in this office and saw a lot of people right here in America who were poor and sick and needed help. And she saw some that were really different from the people she usually treated in her doctor's office. Some were rich, or getting rich. "There are some people with really strange names," she told us.

"What really strange names do they have?" we asked Mama.

"Well, a celebrity brought his kids in," she told us, "and the little girl's name was Moon Unit."

"Moon Unit!" we exclaimed.

"Yes," she said. "And another actor called her kid Bus Stop."

"What???" we exclaimed.  "Why?"

"That's what I was wondering," Mama said. "Even if you shorten them to nicknames, Moon and Bus aren't very great names. I think the kids at school will tease them."

We laughed and laughed about those names: Moon Unit... and Bus Stop.  And now I know that Moon Unit is a fairly well-known actress, musician and author. People call her "Moon."  She named her daughter "Mathilda."

I've known some other children with different names. I taught Morning Star and Field Stream in the Philippines. And I met Blessed in Africa. He's a good pianist.

A long, long time ago, way before Blessed and Morning Star and Field Stream and Moon Unit were born--and even before I was born--an angel came to Joseph and said, "You are to get married to Mary, because she is going to have a baby boy who is God's Son, and you are to call him 'Jesus.'

There are some names that sound a little bit like "Jesus," --like Joshua and Josiah--but I don't see anyone else named "Jesus" in the Bible before Jesus was born on this earth.

What does the name "Jesus" mean?  It means "God rescues," or "God saves."

Jesus showed us that God will rescue us from our sin and our trouble. He was God's promise, and He was God, keeping His promise to us.

He came to rescue me. And he rescues you, too. And that ... means his name--Jesus--is good news!