One little, Two little, Three little Savages; Four little ...

As of 12:05 PM this afternoon, the Savage tribe grew by 33%.  Joanna Beatrice Savage weighed 8 lbs 3 oz and was 21 inches long at the time of birth.  Daddy is glad to report that Mommy and baby are doing very well.  We're enjoying a nice quiet evening in the hospital, and we're looking forward to tomorrow afternoon when Joanna will get to meet her big sister Phoebe as well as other family who will be coming into town.

 

 
"Joanna" means "God is gracious."  In Scripture, a lady named Joanna, Herod's household manager, was healed by Christ and became his follower (Luke 8:1-3).  Later, she was among those who found the empty tomb early on Easter Sunday and ran to tell the apostles what they had seen and heard (Luke 24:1-10).  Joanna is also the feminine form of "John" or "Jon," the first name of both Val's dad (whose birthday was yesterday) and her brother.

"Beatrice" mean "blessing" or "blessed."  This was Greg's paternal grandmother's first name.

Our prayer for her is that, like her namesake, she will tell others of the blessing of God's grace found only in the resurrected Lord:

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise." And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles (Luke 24:1-10, ESV)