"Oh, I forgot my Bible!" I said as we drove off from the Bible study. Actually, it wasn't even my Bible, but the one I picked up at home because of its convenient size and the fact that it had index tabs on every book. (Not that I needed the tabs, but they might be handy, and I didn't see my own favorite Bible just then.)
"I'm so embarrassed I left it," I went on. Well, it was embossed in gold letters with someone else's name, because Howard had bought it at a garage sale! This group was very serious in their conscientious study and note-taking and might wonder why that name was on my Bible! I have never been a good note-taker, so I rarely take notes, but I didn't want to further reinforce an appearance of carelessness.
When we returned to our hosts' house for this week's session, the first thing I saw was the Bible lying right where I left it. "Oh, is that your Bible?" someone asked. I laughed and claimed it. I told them what I had heard Martha Stewart say on a program once about collecting old, monogrammed silverware at antique shops, garage and estate sales. "I just tell people it belonged to my Aunt Mary or Cousin Louise, when they notice the initials," she smiled. (I didn't do that, though.)
A little later, after a time of worship and singing several scripture choruses, I asked my friend, who plays the piano and sings beautifully and leads us, if she arranged the music and scriptures in an original work, or if the songs were established pieces. I complimented her when she said that she did write some of them. When someone else added their appreciative comments of her talents, she said, "Well, my name means a song!" Her name is Carol.
Howard chimed in and said, "I wish we had named our kids biblical names! I think they carry a special significance." (I reminded him that two of ours do have biblical names: Mark and Benjamin. Come to think of it, they are both ministers, but so is our daughter, Julie!)
Someone mentioned how God changed names in the Bible--Abram to Abraham; Sarai to Sarah; Jacob to Israel and Simon to Peter. "God will give you a new name," a man said, to which someone asked, "What is it?" Of course, the answer is that no one knows, as recorded in Revelation 2:17: "...To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it."
My mother named me for one of her sisters, and I have always felt the name was too old-fashioned. When I tell someone my name, they usually say, "Oh, that was my--mother's, grandmother's, aunt's --name. " I looked up the name recently and found that the modern form for Thelma is Thea! I like that much better! A lady at our new church asked my name the other day, saying she had forgotten it, and impulsively I said, "Thea." (She won't remember it anyway.) But I guess I'll stick with my old name, at least until God gives me a new one!
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