Father, I am grateful for the “normal” days You give me. There is something peaceful and settling about them, and a soul needs them once in a while to shore up for whatever the future might hold. Thank You for gifts great and small!

Luke 23:13-25 (<<click here to read the passage)

In the past, I’ve mentioned the importance of names in my family (Just the Four of Us) but besides just passing names along, often names have meanings. For example, Thomas technically means “twin” though I have seen its meaning listed as “twice blessed”. My last name, Fowler, refers to someone who hunts with birds, such as falcons. My middle name is Swentzler. For the record, my grandfather was named after a maternal uncle who was named after the doctor that delivered him. And though we’ve searched for it on numerous occasions (every time we traveled anywhere; we’d look in local phone directories!) we’ve found it to be a dead surname – even online searches don’t yield a thing.

A funny side story – I worked with a lady who was born and raised in Germany and out of curiosity I asked her what the name meant (I was pretty sure it was of German origin.) She laughed, and with her prominent German accent, she said, “It means swindler!” I definitely don’t want to live up to that expectation!

My study Bible* asked the question, “Who was Barabbas?”

Jewish men had names that identified them with their fathers. Simon Peter, for example, is called Simon son of John (Matthew 16:17). Barabbas is never identified by his given name, and this name is not much help either – bar abbas means “son of Abba” (or “son of daddy”). He could have been anybody’s son—and that’s just the point.

Barabbas was an average Joe, a regular guy. He was the son of an unnamed father. But in his case, he committed a crime and a very serious crime at that. He was imprisoned for taking part in an insurrection in Jerusalem against the government, and for murder. (Luke 23:19) That’s pretty serious stuff, then and today. If anybody in this whole scenario deserved death according to the law of the land, it was Barabbas.

We, too, are…criminals who have broken God’s holy law. Like Barabbas, we deserve to die. But just like He did for Barabbas, Jesus has died in our place, for our sins – our crimes, and we have been set free. We don’t have to be “very important people” – we are all average Joes and plain Janes – to accept our freedom in Christ. In fact, thanks to Jesus, God adopts us all as his own sons and daughters and gives us the right to call him our dear Father.

But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.” Galatians 4:4-6 NLT

Now that is something to be grateful for!

*Life Application Study Bible New Living Translation

Jan 5th, 2021, Tues, 7:07 pm