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Message from Pastor Ann Rosendale

Naming your Ebenezers

By Pastor Ann Rosendale

I have always been intrigued by parents who name their babies after Bible characters, particularly obscure Bible characters like Rahab, or Uzziah, or Cleopas. These are all good and meaningful names, but most of us tend to shy away from them because they are so different.

There is a name in the Bible that I think would make a great name for a child. Ebenezer. I’m thinking of suggesting it to a few friends who will be having kids in the coming months. What do you think?

When we hear the word “Ebenezer,” where do our minds immediately go? Probably to Ebenezer Scrooge, the greedy miser in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

But classic holiday movies are not the first or the only place that Ebenezers appear. It was the name of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. And it is a lyric in the second verse of a well-known hymn, Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Do you remember the line? “Here I raise my Ebenezer: Hither by thy help I come.”

Ebenezer shows up three times in the book of 1 Samuel, getting its most notable mention in chapter 7. God’s people, the Israelites, are attacked by the bigger, meaner, stronger Philistine army. The prophet Samuel encourages Israel to approach the battle with prayer, faith, and trust in God. In the end, the Lord delivers the Israelites from destruction by the Philistines, and restores them to peace and safety.

After the battle, God’s people thank God for helping them. They do so by erecting an Ebenezer, a stone pillar that marked the place where they were attacked and then delivered. It might have looked similar to the stone cairns that hikers set up when marking a path or celebrating the completion of a climb at the top of a mountain. Cairns, like Ebenezers, are piles of rocks that remind sojourners of the places they have been and how God helped them in those places. Ebenezer means, literally, “rock of help,” or “God was with me,” or “God helped me here.”

What places or people would you name “Ebenezer” in your life? Where or when or how has God helped you? What Ebenezers are you setting up in your own life to remind yourself and others that God is with us and helps us in time of need?

We are reminded today to be, like the Israelites, aware of God’s presence and help in our lives. And when God helps us, we are challenged to acknowledge God’s help in such a way that everyone who passes through our lives will know that we are people touched by the Holy Spirit’s power.

Perhaps your Ebenezer is a photograph that sits on your desk at work, or a cross that hangs on your wall at home. Maybe there is a letter from a friend that you hang on to and pull out from time to time, reminding you of encouraging words that were just what you needed to hear at the time. Pets can be Ebenezers. So can plants.

Depending on the day, I’m more or less sure about Ebenezer as a name for a baby born in the 21st century. My friends are right when they worry about how mercilessly the child would be teased on the playground. But I do think in some ways it would be powerful to name someone as a bold testament to God’s work in and through the life of that person. At the very least, it could work as a middle name, or maybe a nickname.

So, people of God, raise your Ebenezers today! Lift them high for the world to see how God has helped you. Be on the lookout for Ebenezers in your life, and name them as such when you see them, with great gratitude to God for all of God’s help.

Pastor Ann Rosendale,

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