The Custom Skips A Generation And I Did Not Know

She found out at a christening, from a cousin, in about nine seconds.

The cousin said it as a piece of ordinary family information, the way you would mention that everybody goes to the same place at Easter: of course, the boys take the grandfather's name, never the father's, that is how it has always been done.

And she stood there holding a paper cup and did a very fast piece of arithmetic about the last six years.

Because there have been small things. A pause once, at a dinner. A remark she did not understand at the time and put down to a joke she had missed. Something her mother in law said about her own wedding, four years ago, that made no sense whatsoever and that she has thought about perhaps thirty times since.

They all make sense now.

And what she is feeling, standing by a table of sandwiches with a paper cup, is not annoyance about a naming custom.

It is the discovery that there has been a rule running the whole time, that she has been measured against it without knowing, and that everybody in that room knew it except her.

That is a different and much larger thing, and it is what this page is actually about.

They called him Zacharias, after the name of his father

There is a moment in Luke that has this exact custom in it, said out loud by a whole neighborhood.

And it came to pass, that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; and they called him Zacharias, after the name of his father. (Luke 1:59, King James Version)

You are standing in a scene Scripture has already recorded, and Luke 1:59 has never once presented that custom as binding. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that reach a woman with a paper cup in her hand, and the written word simply reports what they did and then records the mother saying otherwise.

Look at the verb. They called him. Not: it was decided. Not: the parents chose. The neighbors and relatives arrived at the naming with the answer already prepared, because everybody knew how it was done.

And a mother says, no, and the family does not accept it from her, and goes over her head to the father.

The custom in that verse is exactly as strong as the custom in that family. It is stated as though there is nothing to discuss. And Scripture records it being overruled within about three verses.

You have found a rule that Scripture itself does not treat as binding, and Luke 1 shows it stated and then set aside. The written word keeps the neighbors in the room throughout, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that a comfort rather than a fight.

The rule and the not being told

Now the practical part, and it has two halves, because there are two injuries here and only one of them is about a name.

The name half is straightforward. A custom is not a commandment. This family has a practice, and it is a good one, and it belongs to them, and a couple may take it up or not. That is the smaller half and it can be settled in a sentence.

The other half is the one that stings, and it deserves saying plainly. She was not told.

Six years in a family and a rule was running that she could not see, and small remarks landed on her that she could not decode, and she has been slightly off balance in that family for years without knowing why.

You are able to name the second injury out loud, and no verse anywhere asked anybody to live under a rule they were never given. Luke 1:59 has the custom spoken aloud in front of everybody, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives words to a thing that has only been a feeling.

And here is the part that will surprise her, and it is nearly always true.

Nobody withheld it. Families do not explain their own customs, because a custom is invisible to the people inside it. It is not a rule to them. It is just how things are, like which side of the sink the plates go.

The cousin at that christening was not letting her in on a secret. The cousin genuinely assumed she knew, because everybody knows.

You were not being kept outside, and Scripture keeps every relative in that room without making one of them an enemy. The Spirit of God is what stops six years of small remarks from turning into a case against people, and Luke 1 reports the neighbors doing what neighbors do.

Ask, and then write both down

So here is the practical thing, and it has an order to it.

Ask first. One question, to her husband, tonight: is there anything else in your family that everybody knows and nobody has told me.

Because that question is the actual remedy, and the name is only the first thing it will turn up. A man who has lived inside a family his whole life has never once had to say out loud what everybody knows, and being asked directly is usually the only way it comes out.

You are able to ask the whole question rather than the small one, and Luke 1:59 has never once made an unspoken custom into a law. The written word says it out loud in front of everybody, and the Holy Spirit is present when a family's invisible furniture finally gets described.

And then the assignment on this row.

Write down the name the custom expects and the name you want, side by side, once. One sheet, same handwriting, nothing else.

Because at the moment one of them is not a name. It is six years of small remarks, compressed. And on paper it becomes a word, and it can be looked at as a word, and quite often it turns out to be one she likes.

You are able to see it as a word instead of as a rule, and Scripture puts that custom in one verse and sets it aside in three. Luke 1 keeps the family and changes the name, and the Spirit of God is with a woman writing two words at a table tonight.