Sarai Becomes Sarah

Sarai Becomes Sarah
Genesis 17: 15-19

On my father’s birth certificate, our family name is spelled Gouldingay. It was just a slip; I can imagine my grandfather and grandmother (hardly out of their teens) being a bit nervous when they registered the birth, and it seems they confused the registrar. But sometimes people change the spelling of their names more intentionally. I was myself once confused about spelling the name of a friend called Jonathan—or was it Johnathan? Some things that bore his name had the first spelling; others had the second. He eventually explained that he had originally used the first, more familiar spelling but had changed to the second in connection with other changes in his life. He knew he had to change the direction of his life and his lifestyle, and changing the spelling of his name was a symbol of that. Another friend adopted a quite new name when she entered a new stage of her life. There was nothing especially wrong about her old life; she just believed God was taking her into a new stage of life, and adopting a new name was a sign of that...