Free at last!

by abbamoses

Coptic icon of the Resurrection

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. — John 8:36

To the one who conquers, I will give… a new name… — Revelation 2:17

An Orthodox friend relates this story: She and her family attended a talk  by a black woman they knew. Someone asked the speaker why she had adopted an African name, though she grew up as Mildred. She replied that Mildred was a “slave name” — an English name that slave-owners would give to a slave because it was easier to remember or pronounce than their real African name.

Some time later, The same family were at a social gathering, and an acquaintance asked one of them (who had taken the name Joseph in baptism) “Why do you call yourself Joseph when you used to be called Francis?”

Without hesitation, he replied, “Oh, Francis was my slave name.”

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Thanks to Matushka A. with apologies for probably getting her story wrong.