Shalom family. I hope your holidays were filled with love, togetherness, and thanksgiving for all YHVH has given. We're fresh off the holiday season and between my more in-depth posts I wanted to share a little Christmas story with you all.
I've always been fascinated with the meaning of names but particularly my own, Adrien. I've researched the etymology on it several times throughout my life. The most common meaning given is that it's of Baltic origin and means "of the black/dark water or sea". A little anticlimactic for me personally. But this was the area of the Adriatic Sea along the silk road trade routes where vast amounts of wealth traveled to and fro.
Which would explain the alternate meaning associated with the name which is "rich". That one I don't mind so much. A spooky fact about my name is that, according to Behind The Name dot com, the name day (yes, names have dates associated with them) for Adrian/Adrien is September 8th which just happens to be my birthday.
Now that you have that context let's go back in time to December of 2024. My wife and I received a text from my mother about her mother's health issues and how she was being kept in the hospital as a result. My wife, God bless her, showed absolutely no hesitancy in insisting that we get to my hometown to make sure we are there to support our mom and grandma while she was going through this health challenge. So we did.
We stayed for a number of days. It was about two week 'til Christmas. My grandmother made it out the hospital after a successful procedure, thank God. My brother and his family also made their way down that week and we spent a few days enjoying togetherness. My father has been retired from some years due to glaucoma virtually taking his functional vision. He spends much of his time now learning about Bitcoin and encouraging others to invest.
It was him, my brother and I on the couch and my father started this documentary called God Bless Bitcoin. In the documentary there were several references to the Bible. In all honesty, I was not all that intrigued by the show but took it as an opportunity to relate concepts about Bitcoin back to the Bible. This led to a passionate conversation between my father and I in which my brother took as cue to leave the room lol.
Nearing the end of the conversation my father stated, "I'm a Bitcoin evangelist" to which I replied "I am an evangelist for Christ". We laughed and went on about our night. The next day my son was watching videos of gameplay for Warhammer 40K. On the top corner of the screen it had the user displays with the usernames for the players. I noticed one name that caught my curiosity. It said "Gadriel". I found it interesting because it sounded like Gabriel but with a 'd' instead of 'b'.
Many angel names end with 'el' in Hebrew as 'el' in a name denotes something related to God. Gabriel meaning "God is my strength". Or Michael meaning "who is like God". So out of curiosity I took the G off the name and googled "Adriel". Lo and behold it was an actual name. And one found in the Old Testament in 2 Samuel. The meaning of the name is "flock of God" or "follower of God". My wife told me she made a joke about my name being Adriel in the past but I didn't recall that. She said (I'm summarizing) she believes that some things cross my path but I don't receive them until I'm spiritually ready.
I immediately felt a connection to the name. As if the LORD Himself saw me and acknowledged me. As if all the seeking and praying and revelation had led me to this particular moment. A moment of rebirth. And while I'm obviously no Abraham or Israel, I feel a sense of connection to them in finding my identity in God. And I feel as if Adriel is the perfect expression of that.
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Jacob and the Angel by Anthony Armstrong |
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