Proverbs 22:1 A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold
Do you like your name? If you are like a lot of people, when you were growing up there were times you wanted a different name than the one you were given by your parents. You liked some other sound better. When I was a kid, it was always Mike. Usually, I wanted to be called Cowboy Mike. Now, Wil is a perfectly good name, but when I was a kid, I sometimes wanted to be Mike instead of Wil. That is par for the course.
A lot of times parents will be trying to decide what to name their baby. The dad will say, “How about this name?” and the mom will say, “No, I knew someone by that name and I didn’t like them.” Then she will say, “How about this name?” and the dad will say, “Well, I knew someone by that name and I didn’t care for them.” It is interesting how you can hear a name and it instantly conjures up an entire paragraph of characteristics based on the person with that name whom you have known.
The fact is that if a picture is worth a thousand words, a name is worth five thousand because so much of a person’s character is encapsulated in the name. That is a name they have made for themselves. Only you can change your name because you have two names, the one your mom gave you and the one you give yourself every day.
My grandmother was born Agatha Bussy Widner. Can you imagine saddling a kid with that kind of a name? The reason she was is that she was named after her mother’s best friend. So, that was her name until she was in her mid-thirties and decided to legally change her name to Catherine. Now, Agatha and Bussy may be fine names, but she wanted something else. Whether you legally change your name or not, only you can change your name. The reason is that a good name is a choice.
Proverbs 22:1 says, “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold.” So, this is a choice. The Bible says it is a better choice. It is interesting how often the Bible will compare or contrast some virtue or important character trait to money or financial gain. It does this because throughout history people have always placed a great value on money and not so much on things that are more important.
Proverbs 8:10 says, “Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold.” Is it wrong to have choice gold? No, but knowledge is rather to be chosen. Why? Verse 11 says, “For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.” So, a good name is a better choice. Many, many people have sold their name to gain riches and have been poverty-stricken as far as what really mattered. They sold their name.
We hear about get-rich-quick-schemes. There may be such schemes, but there is no such thing as a get-name-quick scheme. You can build your name for years and lose it in a day. So, a better choice is a good name and oftentimes we are making choices between the impulses we have and the headstone we wish to have. I was in a cemetery recently and there was a stone a few decades old that read, “He loved his country and he loved his God.” That is a pretty brief synopsis of an entire life. People aren’t going to know the good, bad, and nuances. They are just going to get one general impression.
So, begin each day deciding what you want your name to be. It means having priorities, having things that are more important than the things that we often spend our time thinking about, money and so on. Everyone has a name, but a good name is rather to be chosen. It is a choice. A good name is a choice. May God help us to have the right priorities to have a good name because we build that name one decision and one day at a time.