Be Still And Know

Luke 2:21 Eight days later, when the baby was circumcised, he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel even before he was conceived. My wife Sue and I have three children, and I well recall the long conversations about names which took place before they were born. We talked about names that had been important in the family, biblical names and others that we simply liked. The naming of Jesus was a very different matter. This was the name Gabriel had given to Mary when she had first been informed of her miraculous pregnancy. Jesus was actually a very popular boy’s name at the time and was a shortened form of the name Joshua, which means “the Lord saves”. Because most people at the time only had one name, they were often known by the place from which they came or the name of their father, so Jesus was variously known as Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus, the son of Joseph. There would probably have been many children around in Nazareth with the name Jesus, but only one who had come to bring salvation. In Jes