Ethan: What's in a Name

"Your love, God, is my song, and I'll sing it! I'm forever telling everyone how faithful you are.
I'll never quit telling the story of your love—
how you built the cosmos
and guaranteed everything in it.
Your love has always been our lives' foundation,
your fidelity has been the roof over our world."

A few thousand years ago, a man named Ethan the Ezrahite wrote these words in a maskil. The word maskil generally refers to a learned, wise, scholar or in this case, an honor bestowed upon their teaching, not many psalms are considered maskils. The whole poem eventually became what we know as Psalm 89.

When Beth and I were getting to know each other, we read through all the psalms over the course of a year. We spent much of the year talking about what each passage meant to us, personally, and around the end of that year we began dating. We were married a year later.

On our honeymoon, we were dreaming together and talking about the future. Of course children came up. And right there and then we decided that it would be a really good idea to pick names from the psalms. Ethan was our first choice for a son.

Ethan means: firmness, steadfastness, constancy.

And what a cool play on words that the guy known for being steadfast and consistant is giving the credit to God instead of himself. "I'm forever telling everyone how faithful You are," He says.

This is part of what I hope for my son. I want him to be a man of his word. I want him to be a rock- steadfast and solid. And I also want him to recognize that no matter how faithful (or unfaithful) he is- there is One who will never fail. There is one "who is the same yesterday, today, and for eternity." I want him to fall in love with the God who doesn't give up on us, no matter how many times we give up on Him.

That's what the name Ethan is all about.