The Name Change

While jogging at the gym the other day, I was watching ESPN and noticed that Samantha Steele changed her name to Samantha Ponder.

To bring you up to speed: Samantha is a sports caster who covers mostly college sports on ESPN.  In the news last fall, she had a whirlwind romance with Christian Ponder, quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings, and they married towards the end of the season in a private ceremony.  I had often wonder (well, not really) if she would change her name since she has already made a name for herself in the world of sports news.

I made a comment on Facebook which goes like this:

Later on during the day, I was talking to a co-worker about a project and he gave me a new title (which every week he gives me some kind of new title; i.e. JCat is a current one, Ninja Cat, etc.)  Then, it just dawned on me that somehow these two connected about name changing.


When Abram became Abraham

In Genesis 17, God made a covenant with Abraham:

⁴ “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. ⁵ No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. ⁶ I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. ⁷ I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you."

In this case, God wanted to make a covenant (promise) to Abraham that he will be father of many nations.  God was going to do great things through Abraham that God prompted a name change.

When Saul became Paul

Often times in the Bible, we see that names of people changes according to an event.  Paul of the New Testament was no exception.  If you don't know Paul, he was once a jealous Jew who persecuted Christians.  He ordered the martyr of Stephen (Acts 7).  But something drastic happened.  God literally hit him with a frying-pan (or a bright light) and asked him, "Why are you persecuting me?" In Acts 9, you see that then-Saul became blind by the Lord and was left blind for 3 days.  A conversion happened in Saul and he came to the Lord.  Several chapters later, you see Saul (who became Paul in this chapter) was hanging out with Barnabas.  God changed his name to the famous Paul who we know who wrote most of the New Testament.

And when not to change your name... (Story of Daniel)

It didn't say explicitly in the Bible but in the first chapter of the book of Daniel, Daniel did not want to defile himself with the wine and food that the king was going to give him and Azariah, Mishael, and Hananiah (aka Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego).  I think along with the food and wine, Daniel did not want to change his name either as this is an identity he had with the Lord.

My point... 

As I approach a stage in my life where I had made a name for myself in the engineering world, I often think, "What if I do get married?  What do I do with my name?"

I think I have a complicated name in the world, for starters.

Josephine is the English name my dad had given me.  He also purposely made it my first name, even though I was born in Hong Kong but he knew I was going to be raised in the U.S.  Most friends who are born in Hong Kong just have a Chinese name.  They later chose an English name for themselves but it is actually not a legal name.  Josephine is legitimately my legal first name.  I have a birth certificate to prove it.

Shuk Yee is the Chinese name my dad had given me.  It is also my middle name.

Chan, of course, is my current last name.

Many of my friends have different rules when getting married.  Some drop their middle name, scoot their maiden name to the middle, and adopt their husband's last name.  Others will drop their maiden name and scoot the husband's name as their new last name.  And now you see THE problem...

If I were to drop my middle name, that wouldn't make sense.  Many Chinese friends call me by my Chinese name.  If I drop my last/maiden name, then when adopting my husband's last name (whatever it might be), it might look strange.  I now have a English first name, a Chinese middle name and , which could be English, Polish, French, Spanish, what have you.  Then people will wonder, "So, what is this middle name?  It looks strange."  People will just be confused.  And a deeper personal struggle is that I will lose my Chinese identity if I were to drop any of the two names.

Names can bring about and define your identity.  God changed the names of Abraham and Paul; he want them to identify themselves as something great and special, that they will do great things for the Lord, and to put away the past of what they used to be.  But then you have Daniel.  Sometimes, you don't want to change your name because you already have that identity with God.

Even God has a lot of names: Jehovah Jireh, Lord, Yaweh, Jesus, Holy Spirit.  
Even Jesus had many titles: Messiah, Prince of Peace, Wonderful Counselor

No matter what your decision is for your name, know that when we become Christians, we put our old self away and become a new being.  God's original plan for us is to have a relationship with us, and that our identity is in Christ.  A spiritual name change occurs.  We are all bride of Christ.  A wife drops her name to change her last name to her husband's name, she become an identity of her husband.  Just like this wife, we as bride of Christ drop our "last name" and adopt a new last name in Christ.

And yet, there are title. In an email with my co-worker, he said, "With all these titles, how do you juggle being such a heavy weight?"

I answered with some humor but ended it like this, "It's only a title, I'm still Josephine."

Then it really hit me that a title may just be a title.  My our identity is in our own names.  We may be mothers, sisters, wives.  Or fathers, brothers, husbands.  We could be CEOs, Presidents, or Managers.  But these titles do not change who we really are.  Just as God has many titles/names, His nature is the same. Just as Jesus had many titles, Jesus is still Jesus.

So, in answering my own question, I'm still Josephine, whatever last name I have.

God's Righteousness

On Facebook, I recently posted an update that says:

There were many lessons on sheep over the course of this past year, so in seeing another sheep lesson... You start to think, "Everything is running together."  Specifically, this lesson for the kids centers around the story of the lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7).  In summary, Jesus taught the audience about a shepherd and his one hundred sheep.  If one goes missing, doesn't that shepherd go find it?  If a shepherd finds a lost sheep, doesn't he rejoice over finding his sheep?  If a sinner repents, if God finds the bad guys (the lost), doesn't heaven rejoice in a New Believer?  Why yes!

So, after that updated, a string of conversation followed, to which a friend suggested I teach the kids in Chinese and I immediately thought of this Chinese character:

義

This is the Chinese character for "righteous" or "righteousness".  In a simple Chinese explanation, it is just being morally good, or right.  Many years ago, when I was in college, I was introduced to a book The Discovery of Genesis: How the Truths of Genesis Were Found Hidden in the Chinese Language.  In the book, the author theorizes that after the Tower of Babel, and after God has spread the people to different countries, confusing their language, each language and culture has some parts or story about God, Creation and of course, Jesus.  For the Chinese language, some of the Chinese character can be broken down to many little characters that tells a story, and there are a handful of characters that if you break it apart, you start to see these root "words" (characters) that make up the bigger picture. A lot of the bigger picture points to the original stories or even prophesies of the Bible.  To be honest, after reading bits and pieces of the book, as well as one or two chapters in its entirety, the author doesn't really explain his theories too well.  But the overall idea is very plausible and I think I can take his ideas and run with the explanation as I will describe the word "righteousness" in the following.

With this particular character, righteousness (義), it is made up of two Chinese characters, 羊 (sheep), and 我 (me), and where the "sheep" is above "me".  And within the character, 我 (me), there are yet two other characters, 手 (hand) and 戈 (blade), side-by-side.  From the book Discovery of Genesis, the author explains that this character might demonstrate our general act of worship in order to become right with God (after the first few pages of Chapter 8 of the book, he goes on a bunny trail...).  I believe that the hand holds the blade, which describes "me", who sacrifice a lamb or sheep for worshipping of God.  You see this act of worship a lot in the Old Testament.  Many of the Jews throughout the OT and even today perform sacrifices of animals as a form of worship.

But it's interesting to note the the character "sheep" is above "me" in the word righteousness.  Although this may mean of early days of people sacrificing sheep to God, it's also a hidden prophesy that in the Gospels, eventually our sins will sacrifice the perfect Lamb of God, who is already righteous.  God is over me, my sins!  No more do we have to sacrifice our animals for worship; God has already done it!  Why?  Because God is righteous and just.  

Interestingly enough, my own name, 陳淑儀 (Chan Shuk Yee), the last character is a form of the character righteousness.  When a "stick person" is added on the left side, it gives that character the ability to be used in a name.  You often see this in the Chinese language, when a character is "humanized" so that it can be used in given names.  

There are many characters in the Chinese language that follows this story-telling.  Maybe to give you a homework, here is the character for "boat":

船

The first character of the right means "vessel", the one that looks like this 八 is eight and the one that looks like this 口 is mouth.  Think Genesis and floods.  :)

Peter: Big Mess... Big Heart

I've developed an interest in learning about the different people from the Bible.

One character I find fascinating and interesting is Peter, (Simon, son of John).  Now, I am not a scholar or theologian, so pardon me if I gets some things wrong.  But in this blog, I hope to be able to portray my own thoughts about Peter.

Peter, in a nutshell: from my personal readings of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), he is a very explosive character.  He's got a good heart but he often put his foot in his mouth.  He often says what's on his mind, whether it comes out right or not.  (But then, I think Jesus valued all answers and made them learned from their actions and responses.)  He was a fishermen by trade and most fishermen were vulgar in nature.  You can also imagine him being a very strong guy, because a sea-faring life is often rough.  Think of him as this big bulky guy, sailor dude.  Okay, maybe even to add some insult, Jesus changes his name from Simon to Peter.  The origins of the name Peter actually comes from the female form petra (greek?), meaning "rock".  Jesus really puts him in his place (so you think you are a man, let me give you this girly name.)  So, just think, Simon the fisherman (a manly mans job), leaves his trade, gets a name like Peter, which is male form of petra, follows Jesus and gets himself in all kind of situations.  Read on...

Since it's quite a challenge to find every single story of Peter, I am going to just highlight some of the stories.

We first meet Peter when Jesus was walking around, recruiting for his entourage of disciples.  Luke 5:1-11 and John 1:35-42 both have more details accounts of Jesus meeting Peter (where Matthew and Mark only mentioned Jesus saw him and his brother Andrew first).  (And please note, Luke 5 and John 1 are different accounts of Jesus meeting Andrew and Peter.)  After Jesus said to the brothers, "be fishers of men; follow me", both Andrew and Peter left everything behind (boats, nets, hooks, maybe their lunch in the boat) and started following Jesus.

We next see Peter in Matthew 14.  To recap the story, Jesus and the disciples wanted to cross the sea, so Jesus told the disciples to go ahead and jumped in the boat while Jesus dismisses the crowd.  To catch up, Jesus walked across the waters as a storm was brewing and everybody was like, what the heck!?  Peter cried out, "If that's you, let me walk across the water towards you."  Jesus told him to come but when Peter first stepped onto the water, he panicked.  (Okay, visualize, big guy, been in very rough situations in the sea...)  Kind of an interesting image, right?  This guy who has survived a few storms is afraid to walk on water towards Jesus.  Okay, so walking on water is not always a typical thing to do, but none-the-less, it was pretty cool.  Jesus told Peter "You of little faith.  Why do you doubt?"  Jesus told Peter to man-up.

There was a story where Jesus asked, "Who do you think I am?"  Peter promptly answered, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God."  Jesus then tells Peter one of the most famous things most Christians should know by now, "You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church..."  (There's a debate whether Peter is the first church leader based on this scripture verse.  There is a comma after "Peter" for a reason...) Yet immediately following this story, Jesus predicts his death and Peter went into denial, "Never, Lord!  This shall never happen to you!"  Jesus rebuked him, saying that Peter has the mind of a man.  (Matthew 16)

Then, Peter denied Jesus 3 times.  I think most people know this story: Peter says to Jesus that he will never leave him, that he would die along side Jesus.  But after the disciples scattered after Jesus's arrest, Peter denied him three times before the rooster crowed.  (Matthew 26)

There were many parables told in between these stories, which Peter pretty much says something in each of these.  Some were responses that Jesus was looking for.  Others were responses that reveals a lot of Peter's human character, which is not bad.  Just shows he's human with a good heart.

The final story I want to share is in John 21:
"¹⁷ The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. ¹⁸ I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” ¹⁹ Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”
²⁰ Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) ²¹ When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”
²² Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” ²³ Because of this, the rumor spread among the brothers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?”

This lesson actually has been on my mind a lot lately.  Prior to verse 17, Jesus has asked Peter 2 other times, "Simon, do you love me?"  In all three questions, Jesus addressed Peter as Simon.  Simon the Fishermen.  Not "Peter".  (Remember where you came from.  Don't forget.  By the way, you get your name back...)  And if we ever knew Greek, it would read more like "Do you phileo me?  Do you really phileo me?  But for real, do you agape me?"  Jesus asked Peter if he deeply loves Jesus.  Now, before, Peter had denied Jesus three times.  Yet, Jesus knew Peter's heart.  Peter is human but genuine.  Jesus would not have asked the question of love three times if Peter were anything else.

I relate to Peter.  Actually, I think we all do.  Peter might be the biggest mess-up Jesus could ever picked as a disciple.  He has said the "wrong" things, have made the wrong decisions, had done a lot of stupid things.  And like Peter, many times in my own heart, following Christ is too hard and complicated.  I say the wrong things, I do the wrong things.  And there are many distractions in the world.  Like with this story, Peter is comparing a friend to himself.  Jesus says, "What is that to you?  Why do you have to compete and compare and try to be like them?  And how is he like you?"  But what Jesus continually told Peter is to "Follow me" from the time of the recruit, until this last lesson.  Jesus taught Peter faith to walk on water, hope that Peter got a second chance, and an agape love that is unconditional.  Jesus knew Peter had a big heart; Jesus never stopped teaching him because he knew Peter will do great things once he understood what it took to follow Christ.

 

My old blog stuff

I just found out that I still have an old blog account through blogger, with a different email account, which I can't seem to find the password... *sigh*  I've enjoyed reading what I was thinking 6 years ago.  :)

My Testimony

I never knew why I waited this long to tell my story.  (And my greatest inspirations come at night.)

I think since I was a little girl, I was always wondering if there was something out there that created us.  I remember one time when I was 7 or 8 that I found a Bible on a shelf next to my parents bed.  I asked my dad, “What is this?”  And he said, “It’s the Bible, it has a lot of stories.”  I asked, “Dad, can you tell me one of these stories?”  And my dad, in his best translation and story telling, told me the story of Noah’s Ark.  I later found the book again and tried to read it myself but it didn’t have pictures and the words were too complicated to read.  So, I put it down and never thought about it again.

I remember one night as I was falling asleep in bed, the glow of the moon shown through the window.  I lift up my hands, looking at it, and wonder, “Who or what made me?  And why am I here on earth?”  It might have been the same night or many nights after that I had a dream that I was viewing a volcano erupting with lava, gas and rock spewing from the mouth.  Many people at the base of the volcano were scared and running away from the melted flowing lava.  I remember being frighten by this dream but didn’t know what it meant. (Maybe more on the volcano dream later - It had reoccurred 2 other times in my life.)

Fast forward to high school.  By now, I had learned some basic knowledge of different religions in middle school and was very interested in learning religion and philosophy.  At the time, through working with my parents at their restaurant, we have become friends with a Spanish schoolteacher who regularly came to the restaurant.  She invited my brother and me to church, a United Methodist church.  We both became more familiar with Christianity and the routines of the United Methodist services. 

Although I learned a great deal and knowledge about God and Christ, I didn’t have a true relationship with God.  Towards the end of my senior year in high school, I hit a time of depression and anxiety.  Although I was young and had everything going for me (going to North Carolina State University that fall), I was left with the thought of, "What will my future hold next?" A friend at the time, who is a Christian, shared with me various verses on God's love, and the more I dwell of these key verses (namely, John 3:16-17 and 1 Corinthians 13:4-13), the more I realize God is bigger than anything I can imagine. God is love.  That summer, I started to read the Bible on my own.  I’m not quite sure how much I read or what I read but I remember I read a lot.

That fall, I went to NC State University.  And like most freshmen, I want to connect to people and make friends.  I met an older friend who went to my high school and he invited me to his church, which met in Chapel Hill.  I started to connect with these “friends” and became a part of most of their church activities.  One girl took an interest in me and asked me if I wanted to become part of a “Discipleship” Bible study.  Most of the time during this discipleship study, it was one-on-one, just me and her.  I began to learn much of their “theology” and practices of the church.  But something was telling me that there is something wrong with this church.  Although, I felt these people were genuine with their teachings and I thought the truth was taught, there were also times during this Bible study that I left with heavy guilt in my heart, like I have done something terribly wrong.  I started to doubt if my own family was good, if my friends outside of this church was safe to hang out with, the thought of being truly accepted by any groups of friends if I did anything wrong.  I was getting brainwashed and I never felt at the time the true grace of God.  However, the girl did challenge me to read John and that was when my eye and hearts started to open towards Christ.  After the very last study, my friend asked me if I was ready to accept Christ and I told her “yes”.  The next night, we were meeting at the church for mid-week and already the baptismal pool was ready for my immersion.  (One of the practices they held was that you are not truly saved unless you are baptized into their church.)  After the “prayer” and the “dunk”, I came out of the water and I felt a sudden presence of the Holy Spirit coming down on me.  And the Holy Spirit clearly told me right then and there, “Get out of this church NOW!”  I felt the presence of the Spirit around me as I walked out of the pool and I heard people singing and clapping around me.  But all of the noise was darkness to me.  It was the strangest thing to me but I felt the peace of Christ in my heart.

That Thursday happened to be the start of Fall Break.  I had already booked a train to go home and decided to go as plan to go home.  I left Raleigh with a lot of confusion already.  So many of my so-called friends were telling me, “Be careful, don’t talk to anybody, they will pull you out of our church.”  When I arrived home, I talked to my friend, the one who invited me to the Methodist church and she said quite bluntly, “That is a cult.” 

When I went back to Raleigh, I ignored all phone calls from the cult members.  “You will not be saved, you will not go to heaven, you will be so lost out there.”  I heard it all.    But the Spirit in me told me, “You should continue to search for fellowship.  You are now a Christ follower”.  After a few months, the calls ceased.  I was quite determined to find a fellowship and started to check out the local United Methodist church before I ended up in Grace Community Church (moving forward called “Grace”), which is part of Great Commission Churches (probably best described as "evangelical baptist").  I have another older friend (who was also my brother’s friend from Boy Scouts) who happened to go to this campus church and I was curious why a church service would be held on campus.  So, by his invitation and my own curiosity, I started to go to Grace.

My first impression of the church: Oh my goodness, they sing contemporary songs and meet in homegroups (small groups that met in homes/apts).  This looks kind of like the previous (cult) church.  But as I started to meet people and connect, it wasn’t what I expected from my previous experience.  Actually, I kind of like these folks!  They were genuine, honest, and really loved the Lord but have a mind of their own (meaning they were not brainwashed).

Those 7 years (5 years while I was a student at NC State plus 2 more years in Raleigh) was an incredible year of my spiritual growth.  There are a lot of details in between but some notable experiences I had when I was with this church:

• I learned the importance of having a quiet time with the Lord.  It was a time set aside almost daily, between me and God, to pray to God and read the Word.  Mainly, to have a true relationship with God.
• I learned the importance of small group fellowship.  Acts 2:42-47 tells how the early Christians met in homes because at the time, they were persecuted by the Romans for their faith.  They could not meet in public like Americans do today in church buildings.  They met privately in homes and broke bread and sang and prayed and shared whatever they had with each other.  Service today is important to connect people but small group fellowship is where the real growth takes place.
• I learned message of love and salvation and the message of the Great Commission, Matthew 28:16-20.  These verses are the foundation of the Great Commission movement.
• During my sophomore year at NC State, God gave me a vision to be a missionary.  (My May 16, 2009 entry has some details.)
• I became a part of international ministries.
• And somehow, at one time, I worked 3 part-time jobs after I graduated from college.  But God was good and He provided.

When my mom was diagnosed with cancer in May of 2005, I decided to move and be with my parents.  I was very sad to leave Raleigh and my spiritual family.  Little did I know, from these first 7 years as a Christian, it set the fundamentals of my beliefs and how these practices led me to where I am today.  Maybe if I have some more time later, I can be more specific.  But this night owl needs to go to bed soon.  :)