What's in a name?

Our way of choosing names for our children have been very similar thus far. 

With Israel I felt like God gave me a clear picture of what he wanted our son's name to represent.

Now with Abe, the same thing happened to Jake. 

We never spent time looking at name books or weighing different options. 

It was almost as if the name was chosen for us. 

Here are Jake's thoughts on why we chose the name Abe.

We named our son Abraham after the father of the faith because of the example of his life. Because of his faith and obedience, God promised an unchangeable blessing coming through his family line. We often think of blessing in temporal ways,( ie. wealth, health, and happiness), however "blessing" in the ultimate sense refers to the resurrection of the dead and restoration of creation. Think about it, after Adam and Eve ate from the tree, a curse was pronounced on creation and human bodies. What was the curse? Death. They had to return to the dust from which they came. But even from the beginning, God promised a seed would come and end the perversion of sin and the resultant death. Blessing=reversal of the curse. During a time of concerted human rebellion against God (Tower of Babylon), Abraham was singled out as the one whom God would bring about this blessing through. Abe's part was to leave Babylon and its idolatry, obey Gods voice, and walk blamelessly before Him. God's promise to him and his seed was the land of Canaan as an eternal inheritance (Genesis 13:17, 17:6-8). Interestingly enough, the book of Hebrews says that Abraham never received his inheritance but lived his life as a pilgrim and sojourner living in tents in the very same land he was promised. Why? Because he was waiting "for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. "(‭Hebrews‬ ‭11‬:‭10‬ NKJV) He was looking for the day when God would send the Seed, reverse the curse of death, and give him the allotted land as an everlasting possession. This is what is so inspiring about Abraham: Against all odds and against the current of the culture, he took God at His word and gave it all for the hope of inheriting the promise in the age to come. Hebrews 6 describes the blessing promised to Abraham and his seed as an anchor for our soul. In the midst of the turbulent sea, an anchor is what tethers the ship from drifting away. In times of great distress and peril, we need an anchor of hope. Hope is an absolute confidence in a concrete event in the future. We don't hope for things we already have or can see. We hope for a future reality. For followers of Jesus, our hope is Abrahams hope: the resurrection of the dead and the restoration of creation.

Our prayer for our son is that he, like the father of the faith, would leave Babylon behind, obey God's voice, walking blamelessly before Him as he sets His hope on the City to come.

Here are some pictures our friend took when they came to visit Abe.

I think he is either 2 or 3 days old in these.