The Name Revealed

Silas Abraham Rue

You figured it out, right?  The passages that we posted with the previous blog had a lot to do with our choosing those names, but I thought I’d give some additional info about why we chose the name Silas Abraham. One of the questions we were often asked when we said that we didn’t know what we were going to name this baby was if it needed to be a biblical name. Our response was always “No, but we want it to be a name of significance.” We desire to choose names for our children that say something about who we pray that they will become. I prayed frequently over the name of this child, asking that the Lord would lead us to a name that would be fitting.

Silas…From reading our blog, many of you know that our dear friends, The Drurys, have a little boy named Silas. He is one of Jonah’s good friends. Until they had named their son Silas, we had never considered Silas as a name. However, the name has really grown on us for a couple of reasons. Certainly the account of the life of Silas in Acts shows the character of a man that we would desire for our son – he “did much to encourage and strengthen” (Acts 15:32) the people of the church, he was chosen by the Apostle Paul to accompany him on a missionary journey during which the church grew and people were brought to faith in Christ, he and Paul were persecuted for the work they were doing and were beaten and jailed yet they continued pray and sing hymns to God and did not back down from their faith in God or the work He had called them to, and he was bold in preaching salvation to those who believe in Christ.

A second important reason for choosing the name Silas is that as a nickname, we will call him Sy. Sy was the nickname of my Grandpa Nelson, who passed away in December of 2004. He was a man of faith, hard-working, and devoted to his family and to service to others. In the winter/spring of the year before he died, my grandpa wrote a memoir of  his life. Grandpa had progressively lost his hearing due to radiation treatment for a cancerous tumor in his neck. In a time that he was unable to hear at all, my grandfather recorded his memories of growing up on a farm in rural Wisconsin, receiving his education, meeting my grandmother, marrying and starting a family, his career as a high school principal and counselor,  and a tiny portion of the many world-wide travels he and my grandma embarked on in their retirement. As we considered the possibility of naming our next son Silas, I again read through my grandpa’s memoir. What a wonderful record of a bit of our family’s history to be able to pass on to our children!

Grandpa Nelson and me on a family vacation to the Bahamas during Christmas 2002.

Abraham…this name has come to me more recently as I have been doing Beth Moore’s Believing God Bible study with the women at our church. One of the assignments is to read Romans 4 twenty times over the course of the 10 weeks of study. This chapter focuses on Abraham and how he was considered righteous before God not because of the things he did but because of his faith in God. Two verses from the chapter have struck me and stayed with me from day to day since the Lord laid them upon my heart. “Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.” (Romans 4:20-21)

We are so excited to meet our little boy, Silas Abraham, in just about 3 months!