A New Name!

Our little Garden Friend now has an actual name.  Syd was given the list of all your suggestions. He did not know who chose which name, but he knew almost immediately, the name should be "Quincy".  As I look at him out in the garden now, he looks like a Quincy. The winner was a friend who we met while living in South Carolina.  Juli went to our church down there.  She has chosen to receive one of Syd's beautiful lapel/pins, the salmon lure.

What is in a name?
This morning I was reading in the book of Matthew about the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Those who put him on that cross had no idea who they were crucifying.  He was truly the King of kings and Lord of lords.  In the common hall the whole band of soldiers platted the crown of thorns and placed it upon His head, put a scarlet robe upon Him and gave the Lord a reed for his right hand. There they mocked him, bowing the knee, saying 'Hail, King of the Jews'.  As He hung upon the cross, it said that 'they' passed by and reviled Him and 'wagged their heads'.  The chief priests mocked Him.  The thieves also, which were crucified with Him, 'cast the same in His teeth'.

It should not be easy to read these accounts from God's Word and take the Lord's death for granted, but I have been guilty of doing so. Don't get me wrong, I know that He shed His blood and died for ME, so that I would not have to die for my own sin, and I have trusted that one-time sacrifice as my only means of a right relationship with God;  but I suppose it is possible to fall into the trap of not empathizing with our Lord in the terrible injustice and pain that He went through.  When I put my faith in Lord as my Savior, the Bible says that I "died WITH Him, was buried with Him and rose again with Him." Do I truly even try to know what Jesus was feeling when He was "despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief"?  Sorrowfully, I must admit that I sometimes take the Lord Jesus' horrific death for granted.

Galatians 2:10 says that, "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."  The soldiers, chief priests, passers-by and thieves had no idea that one day EVERY KNEE will bow to Him!  Praise the Lord for the testimony of one thief, who did find out, that very day, that Jesus Christ was God, and trusted Him to be his personal savior while hanging on a cross beside Him!  When Jesus "gave up the ghost" and the earth quaked, the veil of the temple was torn in two, the rocks split and graves were opened (bodies came to life and walked upon the earth!), I wonder what they thought then.  I know that Josephus, an historian who wrote during the Bible times, gave account of it in his writings.  It was a time of great wonder among the unsaved of the earth.  The very God of creation died there that day!

It is because I placed my personal faith in the blood shed on that cross two thousand years ago, that I can have my New Name!  I went from being an unbelieving heathen, to being a Child of God, one of a "chosen generation"!!  Before I knew the Lord I went about singing the old songs, wagging my head and mocking God's Word.  Along with my new name, God has put a "new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God"!

I am glad that Quincy has a new name, but SO glad that the Lord changed me from a mocking, head-wagging person to one who is now able to be named as Child of God!