The wise will call us by name.

The name I was born into and grew into. The names I grew out of,

grew into and out of, so many ways to call me by my name.

Through their faithfulness, Abraham and Sarah gained a new name, a sign of their relationship with God, a sign of being the recipients of a promise to be carried out for all generations.

Names are important.  Names help us to address each other and to breach barriers.  

            Names are funny, we name our children after family members, after characters in books and movies, we name them to be unique or to be familiar, and sometimes we name them to honor someone we love or loved.  Simply put there is a lot of time spent naming our children, naming our pets as well as boats and cars and farms and …. you get the point we love to call things by name.

Sometimes a name last for only a short period of time.  When our son was born he was born early and his legs and arms were like little twigs.  My father held him in his hand and said “he is like a little chicken.”  He was called chicklet after that for a long time.  As a matter of fact, we rarely used his given name his first year, we called him chicken or chicklet. Eventually he grew up and out of this name.  Of course, he grew out of it before we did.

            Recently a new baby came into our lives, a very cute great-nephew who is has acquired the name “Goose”, he too may grow out of this name though his great-grandfather was a “Bull” for life so who knows!

These nicknames, these secondary names come from deep places of love, joy, comfort, security and playfulness.  They are the names that hold a thousand feelings welled up in hearts and they are quite often the words for what is impossible to name. These are names that say “You belong to us.”

           Abram and Sarai were fine names when they were part of their small community, but they were going to be the ancestors of nations, they were going to “parents” to a world of people and they were worthy of a name, a name chosen by God. Names born of stars and heavens, oceans and mountains, names to express hope for the world, “You and all who follow belong to me.”

There are names we have to be ready for, names that are placed upon us by choice or not, names we ear and names we grow into: parent, spouse, neighbor, friend, teacher, electrician, gardener, artist and musician. 

Just as God calls us by name, we call out to God by name.  Counselor, Healer, Father, Mother.  God calls out the name “Son” for Christ.  See him there---he is my Son.  We call Christ by name as well, teacher, Savior, Redeemer and he calls to us—disciples, followers, sister, brother.

It is tragic that this act of name calling, can be twisted and used to separate us, degrade and dismiss us. 

A few weeks ago, I shared that the schools were having a no name calling week. I think this is a wonderful idea but I began to wonder what if rather than avoiding name calling we took back name calling—what if we took name calling out of the hands of the bullies, out of the hands of the racists, out of the hands of the strangers.

What if we reminded each other of our names? Our names that hold hope for the future, names called out in love, and names that do not define us but rather acknowledge us as valuable.

There is a Chinese Proverb that says,

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.”

The wise will call us by name.