Naming the Rainbow

One of the things I love about the Word of God is how it's so multi-dimensional.  The stories shared in the Bible never have one meaning or application.  There's the immediate application...the future application...the parallel meaning...and so on and so forth.

Take the story of the Israelites in the desert.  God was teaching them to trust Him for their immediate provision, right?  He wanted their hearts of obedience as they trusted Him for manna.  But there is so much more to that story when you look back at it as a historical account.  We can analyze the Israelites as a people, and God's ways as a Father.  We can appreciate the way the God pursues His children, disciplines us, and trains us in the ways He wants us to go.  So many dimensions!  Each time we read these stories, we find the blessing of learning more about Him and deepening our relationship with Him.

That's what I wanted to demonstrate in the name of this child.  I wanted a name that resonated with a multi-dimensional story line.  

It didn't start that way, though.  Samuel became a name that attracted me because of the story of his birth.  Samuel was the name of the child that came out of Hannah's grief.  She wept so bitterly that she appeared to the priests at the temple as though she was drunk.  This depth of grief is something that has visited me more often that I can count, and so it felt appropriate to name this child after a story in the Bible that felt so familiar.

Naming this baby Samuel after the baby that Hannah first bore felt natural and appropriate.  But as I prayed more into the naming of this baby, I started to realize how much more this name actually meant to me.

I recently heard a preacher talk about naming a child.  He emphasized that the act of naming things was a responsibility that He bestowed onto Adam as the first Image Bearer.  As Sons and Daughters of Adam, and Image Bearers of Christ, our responsibility to name our children is actually very significant.  He recounted the birth story of Benjamin, and how his mother tried to name him as she was dying out of the difficulty of her labor.  However, after she had passed, Jacob gave Benjamin his name that meant something more - a way of prophesying into his future instead of just telling the story of his past. (To read the story, start at Genesis 35:16)

That's the beauty of Samuel's story, and thus his name.  When the Lord exchanged beauty for Hannah's ashes, He didn't stop at giving her a bouncing baby boy.  He inserted Samuel into the Greatest Story, and gave him a role that changed the course of History.  You see, Samuel grew up to be the prophet that would anoint the head of David and foretell him as the future King of Israel.  David's line held the lineage of Jesus, our Savior.  

Samuel's story starts as a miraculous answer to a prayer out of the heart of a barren woman, and ends with Samuel becoming one of the greatest prophets in the Bible.  The prayers of a desperate barren mother became a man with a heart so in-tuned with his Heavenly Father that he could prophesy with incredible detail and insight.

I realized that I had been praying for our next baby to be filled with the Holy Spirit from birth, and I wasn't sure at first how to reconcile naming him OUT of our story *and* INTO that Spirit-filled destiny.  My desire has always been for our next child to live a life characterized by his relationship with the Lord - and that is what Samuel had!  I had my answer!  I could name this child Samuel with confidence, because Samuel's beginning to life was just as relevant as the end of his story.  

We are naming this little boy Samuel with faith that his life will become a testimony to God's powerful plan.  We pray that he is filled with the Holy Spirit from a young age, and that he will bring the word and work of the Lord to people all over the planet.  Lord, let him astonish people with your knowledge of their heart as He shares your revelations and insert him into your storyline in a way that helps change the course of History.