Isaiah

I love reading testimonies, and in recent days I’ve come across this by Richard Ganz that I want to share with you. It was first posted by Tim Challies over at his blog, Challies.com.

The Revival Of A Rebel Jew

by Richard Ganz
First published at Challies.com, reproduced in part.

In my youth I spent every afternoon studying the Hebrew Scriptures, five days a week, and on Friday night and Saturday I worshiped. As I grew older I worshiped for a time each day in the synagogue morning and evening. I would rise before dawn and before going to the morning service, in obedience to rabbinic tradition, I would put on tefillin — the boxes containing God’s law — on my forehead and arm.

Then one cold, clear midwinter night my life was shattered. My father had a heart attack and I ran for comfort and hope to the one place I thought I would find it — the synagogue. The doors were locked and as I hammered on them I looked up into the New York night sky, cold, crystal-clear and filled with stars and I cursed God. “I am through with you!” I said. But that night, as I turned away from the God of Israel; the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, little did I realize that he was far from through with me.

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Sometimes I feel like Rumpelstiltskin — you know, that dwarf in the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale who promised to help a queen spin gold out of straw if she could guess his name correctly?

Unlike the aforementioned queen and her servant who overheard the dwarf’s name before the final guess, not many people have even heard or pronounced my name “Isaiah” once in their lifetime.

Until they meet me, either in person or via email or other channels of communication.

Since I was 18, my baptism name has given more than a good number of people occasion to mistake me for a girl, a good laugh, or simply mangle it into something unpronounceable and might even be rude in another language.

Let me give you some examples.

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