Back in February Liz and I took a long weekend trip to Minnesota for some much needed rest and relaxation. In route to Minneapolis we were going through the name book trying to find a name that stuck out to us. We had just finished the "E" names when I turned to Liz and asked her, "what do you think about the name Easton?" Liz didn't give me a real positive response, but she wrote the name down as one of my favorites. There's so much uncertainty in choosing a name... Does he/she look like that name? What will other people think about the name? What will he/she be called for short? Will people be able to spell and pronounce the name correctly? There was just so much to think about in making this decision.
After much prayer God revealed to us that these little details were not important. After all this was His child, not ours. With this in mind, we decided that the middle name would be our prayer for this child. We began looking at meanings rather than names when we stumbled upon Josiah. Josiah means fire for the Lord and we have no greater pray than this. We desire that our son would have a passion that burns deeply for Jesus Christ and so we had found our middle name.
Working backwards we begin to look at the meanings behind several first names. Again, we came to Easton... Easton means "of the east" or "for the east". During this period we were also taking a class titled Perspectives. God was revealing to us that the majority of the people in the world who do not know Jesus are found in the east (10/40 window). When putting Easton Josiah together there was a real testimony in our sons name. Our prayer is that Easton would be on fire for the Lord and that his passion would spread to the east to those who have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. Upon hearing this Liz also knew this was to be the name for our son.
Second thoughts... After agreeing on the name Easton Josiah, Liz said, "everyone is going to think he is named after a baseball bat!" To this we agreed that is just icing on the cake... Every time our son is confronted about his name the door has been opened to his testimony. We pray now for the testimony of Easton Josiah Reasland!
