The Beginning of a Name

A family desire

Children have a way of pushing parents into making things happen. So it was with Cherith. Our son Sean grew up with ideas of nobility and knights, of family crests and colors, and yearned to make those a part of his life. Our girls grew up loving Anne of Green Gables and the stories of Jane Austen and our oldest daughter Sarah, had decided that their home needed a name. We tried to tell them that we did not live in a grand house worthy of its own identity, yet the subject was never dropped. 

The almost 4-acre pond in our back yard is home to some wild geese. One day while we were all involved in yard work, Sarah again began pleading for a name for our home. As my husband Gary was raking the shoreline he smiled and beamed at her and announced that he had finally come up with the perfect name. 

“You can be Sarah of Goose Poop Pond.” 

We all laughed and showing that she was going to be a good sport about it, so did Sarah. Yet the desire lingered. Gary and I could see the virtue in a name, especially a name of honor. We knew that knights and kings rallied under flags of old. That a crest not only named you but gave you something to remember who you were and from whence you came: A history full of ideals and standards, all in a picture (or a name) on a shield. 

Couldn’t we do the same? Find a name, a single word that would represent all that our family hoped to be, a name that spoke volumes when uttered and determined behavior when remembered?

It came when we weren’t looking

It took quite a while to find, and like most things of this nature, it came when we weren’t looking. Gary and I were talking about something he had read in 1 Kings 17. Ahab, the King of Israel, was an evil man and had angered God more than all the other kings before him. The Lord sent Elijah to tell the king that there would be neither dew nor rain in the land for years. This of course angered the king, and he sought the life of Elijah, so the Lord sent Elijah to hide by a brook and commanded the ravens to feed him there. Elijah went and did as he was told. He drank of the brook and the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the evening. 

Now ravens are carrion birds and the thought of eating bread and flesh brought in their beaks was very unappealing to say the least. As we were contemplating the implications of such food and the obedience and trust that Elijah showed in the Lord, a flash of inspiration lit up my mind.

Did the brook that Elijah hid by have a name? And if it did, would it be a name that our family could embrace? The symbolism was there in every way that was important to us. We went back to the scriptures and discovered that the brook was named Cherith. As we called our children together, we knew it was the name we had waited for…and we even had our very own brook. 

We created it together

The little brook that ran down our property line was actually an artesian well. When we purchased our home, the previous owner had piped the water underground to feed the pond. One of the first things we did after moving in was to uncover the pipe, dig a stream bed, line it with rocks, and let the water flow freely above ground. We had all worked very hard on that little brook. Every rock and stone were placed there by hand. What made it even better is that we all did it together as a family. 

More than just water

But Cherith isn’t just about a brook. Elijah had done everything the Lord had asked him to do. He was, like all prophets before him, willingly obedient to the Lord. It is human nature to think that such a one would be deserving and in receipt of worldly blessings. Yet, there he was hiding in the wilderness to save his life and eating meat that was most likely from something dead on the ground.

Cherith is about obedience and a willingness to actually trust God, to know that when you do what He asks, he will indeed take care of you. 

Sometimes, like being fed by ravens, it may not be in the manner that you would expect or even like but take care of you He most surely will. And always it will be in a way that you need most in order to grow and progress along the gospel path. We usually don’t always see what we truly need, but a wise and loving Father in Heaven knows exactly what experiences will enlarge our capacity for good and expand our vision of truth. 

The brook that Elijah hid by eventually dried up and the Lord sent him to a widow woman for sustenance. Trusting God, she fed him from the last of her resources. Days later, her son fell sick and died and Elijah called upon the Lord to heal her son and he revived. 

A new level of trust

It’s interesting that the first signs of cancer showed itself because of our little brook. Sean had come home to help me fix the waterfall part of the stream. We had shut off the water and he was chipping away part of the concrete that we had decided to remove while I was rearranging rocks and shoveling mud. We worked for the better part of that day and finally finished with both of us wet and dirty. Before Sean showered, he asked me to shave those wild hairs that grew on the back of his neck. Shirtless and kneeling on the bathroom rug, I saw a rather ugly strange mole on his back. Nothing looked right about it and I told him he should get to the doctor and have it checked. 

Those first surgeries and the year of chemo that followed were hard. The almost five years of remission were a blessing. Through it all our little brook flowed on. Then when cancer returned to Sean, nothing was the same. As the cancer swept throughout his body the artesian well that was our stream began to diminish. First it would only flow in the winter but during the summer months it was dry. Then it dried up entirely. The water that was once ours was flowing somewhere else. 

Etched in wood

We have a plaque hanging above our door that leads to the pond with the word “Cherith” that Sean made for us one Christmas. He carved every letter by hand and told us that with every shaving and stroke of the blade, he thought about what Cherith meant to him and all the lessons he had learned and the truths he had come to embrace. For him, Cherith had become all that we hoped it would be. We didn’t know it then, but it would be the last thing he would ever make for us. 

We too called upon the Lord to heal our son, but such was not His will. 

Like the widow woman who ‘went and did’, we will continue to do as the Lord has asked and willingly, gratefully, follow where He leads. It is in giving all our heart, our trust, and even our only son to Him, knowing that if we do, He will take care of all the truly important details of our life.