View From the Vicarage
“What’s in a Name?”
Well surprisingly quite a lot. For instance, “P.G.Tips” , the tea monkeys loved to drink, started out in the Second World War as “Digestive Tea” which eventually became “Pre-Gestee”, a variant of the name, and then abbreviated to P.G. “Hovis” – once our favourite brown bread - started life in 1887 as “Smith’s Patent Germ Bread” – hardly a mouthwatering prospect. So a competition was arranged with the winning entry being “Hovis” – taking the Latin words “hominis vis” (strength of man) and then subtracting the middle bit!
“Jelly Babies” began life in 1864, invented by an Austrian immigrant working at Fryers of Lancashire and were originally marketed as “Unclaimed Babies”! By 1918 they were produced by Bassett’s in Sheffield as “Peace Babies” to mark the end of the First World War. Production was suspended during World War Two due to war time shortages but in 1953 the product was re launched as “Jelly Babies”.
Of course, names vary in popularity as the years go by. Children in China in 1949 were often called “Nation Builders”, “Liberators” and “Great Celebrations”. The start of the Korean war (1950–53) then saw a spate of “Motherlands”, “Patriots” and “Anti – Imperialists”, while the cultural revolution spawned a generation of “Rebellions”, “Revolutions” and “Reds”. But old habits die hard. In 1990, for instance, a village in Eastern China named 21 newborn babies “Asian Games” which only goes to show how important names can be.
And that is why the name Jesus is also so important for us to really understand - for if our greatest need had been for information, God would have sent us an educator; if it had been for money, he would have sent us an economist; if it had been for technology, he would have sent a scientist; if it had been for pleasure, he would have sent an entertainer. But because our greatest need was and is to receive God’s forgiveness he sent JESUS which literally means “Saviour” (Matthew 1:21).
For all of us, whether we choose to recognise or admit it, need a Saviour. Sometimes we need to be saved from ourselves, from a worry or a habit which so often drags us down. Sometimes we need to be saved from others, from those at work or at school, who make our lives a misery. But even more important than this, all of us need to be saved from an eternity without God “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). This is why Jesus the Saviour was born - for as Luke proclaims in Chapter 2 of his Gospel:
“I bring you good news of great joy. Today in the town of David your Saviour was born - CHRIST the LORD” for “God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
Charles
