Naming Luke

I wanted to go into a little more detail on the name we chose. Many of you know that this is the same name that we had chosen for our first referral (Alazar). After losing that referral, we had a really hard time knowing what to do about a name. We've been asked many times over the last five months if we had chosen a name for the baby, and we would always say, "No, we're going to wait until we meet him to decide." Which was the truth - we really didn't know!

We struggled with feeling like we needed a new name for this new baby, but we couldn't come up with any that seemed to be right. In the end we decided that Luke Steven was the name we wanted to give our son, and even though we thought for a time that our son was supposed to be Alazar, God knew all along that it was to be this precious boy now sitting in my lap. This is Luke.

The name Luke means "bringer of light." As we considered the name, we did some reading about Luke in the Bible and realized his heart was much the same as ours. He demonstrates a great concern for the orphans, the widows, and the poor of the world, and he magnifies Jesus' call on us to care for them. Our prayer for Luke is that he will bring the light of Christ to those around him and that his heart will be burdened for the needs of the world.

His middle name, Steven, is in honor of my dad. I think my dad was quite a bringer of light himself to a lot of people. Though they won't meet until heaven, I hope that we can teach Luke the traits of loyalty, kindness, endurance, and integrity that my father modeled for me.