At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”
With all our other children, Rhonda and I had already decided on their names before their arrival. However, with Mary the decision was still out, partly because Mary was the name of her grandmother, Rhonda’s mother, and Rhonda had some hesitation about calling our little girl by that name.
It was the above story from the Bible that brought the realization that Mary was to be her name. As with all our children part of the process of choosing a name involved asking God, “What will the character of this child be?”
With David we felt “Peace”
With Jonathan “Friend”
With Sarah “Love”
For Mary it was “Joy”
The passage from the Bible above tells of the time that Mary, while pregnant with Jesus, went to visit Elizabeth and, upon entering the house, Elizabeth’s baby, who was to be John the Baptist, leaped for joy in the womb of his mother.
This story was so impactful that our baby girl was named Mary Elizabeth in English and Yoshiko in Japanese which means child of joy.
That was 23 years ago. Look for my next post for what Paul Harvey would call, “the rest of the story”.