he shall be called...

I've recently finished reading a book, He Shall Be Called, by Robert J. Morgan. It is a great devotional book that looks at 150 different names for Jesus. It has really opened my eyes to the Old Testament prophecies of the coming Messiah and how Jesus fulfilled them. The book also reinforced and cast new light on how He currently lives and reigns.

During the reading of this book, Amy & I have continued to discuss the name of our soon-to-be-born son. A lot of people tell us horror stories of name-deciding. Our first conversation took about 15 minutes where we pretty much had it all decided. Over the next few months while reading this book, I thought it would be good to start examining our chosen names and the basis of them – especially in light of considering the names of our Lord and what’s in a name. So the names:

First name: William. Is he named after me? Well, no. Not intentionally at least. His first name is after my father, who has gone to be with the Lord. It just happens to be my name as well. I am the fourth William Edward Davidson. I always thought I would never name my child after me -- four is enough! However, in light of my father’s influence and the fact that, besides my retelling of stories of my father, our son will never know my dad this side of eternity – I figured he could be close to my father by sharing his name.

Middle name: Thomas. Thomas has a two-fold meaning for us. First, it represents my mother’s side of the family. Her father, brother, and nephew are all named Thomas. So the name Thomas would specifically be from my grandfather on my mom’s side. My sister and I had the great blessing of spending a lot of our lives with both sets of grandparents. However, our son will not have the same experience with his grandfathers. We are very grateful that he will have two amazing grandmothers (and one GREAT-GRANDMOTHER!) to love him and care for him. Second reason for Thomas: in the Scriptures, Thomas and Peter made two of the most profound claims of who Jesus was during his earthly ministry; Peter, “you are the Christ" (Matthew 16:16) and Thomas, “My Lord, and my God” (John 20:28). I love that Thomas, as doubting as he was, was the one that equates our Lord Jesus with God himself – the first to clearly declare that Jesus and God are homoousios (Gk.) – of the SAME essence.

Chinese name: Qian-He. We asked Amy’s mom to give William his Chinese name. Little background: for those that don’t know, Amy is not Chinese, she is Taiwanese. However, Taiwan shares the same written language as China. Chinese names are usually made up of two characters (excluding the last name), as seen on the right. Momma Chen wisely chose two attributes of character that we pray William will have. They are taken from Matthew 11:29. Jesus says that He is “gentle and lowly hearted" (ESV).

QIAN : Humble (“lowly hearted”)
HE : Gentle

(Read the whole text of Matthew, chapter 11, here.)

It is our prayer that William, by God’s grace, would be both gentle and humble. This takes us back to where we started at the beginning of this post. We live to be conformed to Jesus’ model and to His glory. He Shall Be Called has helped me to see His many attributes that I hope, again by God’s grace, to model for my son. And "William"…my father was a great model of gentleness and humility. I hope I can be the same for our William.