They Have Not Named Him Yet

Nine days. The form is on the counter and there is a shortlist of four written on the back of an envelope in two handwritings, and three of the four have been crossed out and written back in.

There is a good reason for one of them. There is a family reason for another. The third one they both liked in the car on the way to the hospital and neither of them likes it now. The fourth one is his grandfather's and he has not been able to say out loud why he cannot use it.

They have until day forty-two, and everybody who has asked has been told they are taking their time, and everybody has said something warm about that.

What is actually going on has nothing to do with any of the four names, and he half knows it. This flat is a sublet that runs to March. His hours were cut in June. His wife has not been back to work and they have not worked out whether she is going to. Nothing in that house is fixed, and into that house has arrived a person who needs one fixed thing immediately, which is what he is called.

And every time he goes to write one, some part of him thinks: what if we are somewhere else, and what if everything looks different, and what if this is the wrong one for the life he actually ends up having.

Anybody who has been asked for something permanent by a provisional life knows this. And I want to say up front that I am not going to choose anybody's baby's name. Obviously. But also not by hint, not by story, not by mentioning one twice.

Who does the devising and who does the establishing

Let me put down a line and note that it hands out two different jobs.

A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.Proverbs 16:9

Two clauses and a but between them, and almost everybody reads the but as a rebuke. It is not. It is a division of labor.

The man devises. That is his, and Proverbs assigns it to him without a hint of criticism, which matters in a book that criticizes plenty of things. And then the Lord directs, which in the Hebrew is closer to establishes or makes firm, and that is a different verb doing a different job on a different part of the process.

Which means the naming is on his side of the sentence. It is devising. It is a man doing what a man is described as doing. And the establishing, the making firm of the actual steps that follow, was never his and is not being withheld from him.

You are the one who devises, and the establishing was assigned to Somebody else in the same sentence. That is not a soft word for a man with a shortlist of four. It is what is written in Proverbs 16, and it is His Spirit who takes a written line and puts it into a living room at night. The name is a plan. The establishing is God's.

And notice the size of what the man is trusted with. Proverbs does not say his heart deviseth badly, or that his devising is futile. It simply states that the two things belong to two parties.

You have been trusted with the deciding and released from the outcome, and that division has been in place the whole nine days. Proverbs 16:9 is the text this sits on, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old proverb land in a father holding a sleeping baby.

The name is not a prediction

Now the part this category exists for.

Nine days is not indecision and it is not a failure to bond and it is not anything wrong with him. A man who cannot write a permanent thing on a line while his house runs to March is not being difficult, he is noticing something real.

And I am not going to tell him which one, or push him to hurry, or suggest that a decisive man would have done it on day two. Some people name a child in an hour and some take a month and neither is a measure of anything.

But there is one thing I want to lift out of it, because it is the whole weight and it is a misunderstanding.

He is treating the name as a prediction about the life. It is not. It was never that. A name is not a forecast, and no child has ever grown into the wrong life because of one, and the arrangements of this house in March have nothing at all to do with what that boy is called.

I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.Isaiah 43:1

That is God speaking to a displaced people. Called by name, and belonging, and neither of those is described as waiting for a stable address.

You were called by name yourself, in an unsettled year, by a God who did not wait for the arrangements first. Isaiah 43:1 is where the word puts it, and His Spirit is the one who lets a man see what a name actually is and what it is not.

You are established tonight, with the form on the counter and the sublet running to March. It is written that a man devises his way and the Lord establishes his steps, and it is the Spirit who makes that true in a father nine days in.

If any of this ever turns dangerous, and staying safe genuinely comes into question for either of you or for the baby, call or text a crisis line where you live, 988 in the United States, and talk to a doctor, a midwife or a counselor. The first weeks after a birth are heavier than anybody says and there are real people whose whole job this is, and being established by God has never been a reason to get through it alone.