My
last blog about preaching needed a follow up.
The morning I preached, I realized that for the first time in a long
time, I felt I was living up to my name.
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know that words and
origins and names mean a lot to me.
Words have power, and choosing the right ones
By
the very fact that you have found my blog, you know that I go by Angi. And most people correctly make the assumption
that Angi is not my legal name. My
parents named me Angela, which means Messenger of God. Most of the time, I feel like anything except
a Messenger of God! What right do I have
to claim such a powerful name as this, when most of what I do on a daily basis
seems so pedestrian, so ordinary? I tend
to feel rather strongly about this, and as such, I have a tendency to take
offense when people assume they can call me by my full name.
But
after preaching the other day, and having the pastor confirm that this was a
message his church needed to hear… well, I felt that God had truly used me for
His purpose that day. That I truly was
His messenger. One of the guys on the
squad started calling me Angela sometime around Hong Kong,
at first using it sparingly. Nearly two
months later, I can’t remember the last time he called me Angi. And I’m okay with it.
Last
month I felt like I was Angela for a day.
Perhaps in January I will feel like Angela for two or three days.
