Not a coincidence!

[greybeta]

So, um, my voice of conscience was speaking to me tonight. It told me to call up this girl who recently announced her pregnancy over Facebook. Now that in itself is not unusual, except for the fact that she's decided to raise it as a single mom in a Baptist upbringing (unwed mothers are TABOO in the Baptist church). Oh, and I've never met her in real life, I just friended her over Facebook since she was part of the Baptist Collegiate Ministry and therefore knew a lot of the people I knew.

So I called her up. She was like, who is this? After a short explanation of who I was (I mentioned Da Noise story), she asked if I had anything important to say. I told her that the Lord put it on my heart to call her up and tell her something.

If you have a son, you should name him Joseph, because Joseph means "God will increase". Your son will increase both your happiness and troubles for the greater good.

There was an, "Omigosh, you just made my day! I was thinking about naming my child Joseph if I had a boy..."

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that was not a coincidence! ^_^

Comments

Joseph

[cjvornheder.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons that Joseph is a totally cool name is that Joseph is one of the two Bible characters that, I'm told, is never recorded to sin in the Bible. Of course, they did sin. The other one was Daniel. But, whereas God was very careful to exhibit the incredible humanness of most all of his biblical characters, Joseph and Daniel stand out of the Bible as shining examples of the character that is possible in Him. I don't know, but I THINK He did it this way because of the times in which they lived and the times in which their books would have their first and greatest impact. I think of them both as men of character and faithfulness and manly integrity, men who light the way.
Being an unwed mother isn't just hard in a Baptist church, it's hard anywhere. Your time is no longer your own, and there's no one to share that burden with you. You could wish that the church would come in and share her burden with her, but . . . the church didn't get her pregnant and honestly isn't responsible for her pregnancy. Each one should carry his own load, and a lot of people at the church honestly have plenty on their shoulders to carry already. That's a hard lesson I had to learn. Just because I'd gotten myself in a pickle didn't make the church responsible for bailing me out.

Re: Joseph

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

Uh, hi random person! Coincidentally, my name is Daniel! ^_^

And yeah, this burden is largely her own. The church can only do so much. It'll be interesting to see what happens. In the meantime, we'll be praying for her.