Live, Love, Give…Musings and reflections

Names are very powerful. They embody your whole identity in just a few syllables.

Using a person’s name in face-to-face conversation is a fairly deep and special thing. Most of us walk around having conversations without ever using the other person’s name, and most of those conversations are everyday business or small talk. But think of when we do use someone’s name in our conversation:

• When we want to single them out to begin a conversation
• When we want to make it clear that we are speaking just to them
• When we want to show them that we value them highly
• When we love them so much that their very name is music

In my own life, I’ve noticed that whenever I’ve come to value someone very highly, to desire their friendship and desire to show them love, I tend to look them in the face and call them by name. If a man opens a door for me, that’s something I value. Typically, I’ll look that man in the face and thank him by name, if i know it, to show him I value not only his action, but him as a person. If a girl is talking with me, I often look her in the face and use her name to show her how much I value her.

So, as my speech teacher might ask, who cares? Why does any of this matter?

In the Bible it says that God not only knew us before we were born, but He calls us by name as His sheep. So far, we’ve already determined that indicates value. But there’s more.

In the Old Testament, Israelites couldn’t speak or even write God’s name. God was considered so holy and distant that His name couldn’t be pronounced. But now, through Jesus, we find that not only can we speak or write God’s name, we can call Him Abba (Father, the familiar form). We can write it without a dash in the middle. God isn’t any less holy, but our relationship has changed. In European societies in earlier days, people did not address each other by their first names until they had received permission to do so. They called each other by their title and last names: Mr. Smith, Miss/Mrs. Jones. Still today, in most romance languages, there is are formal and familiar forms of address: in Spanish usted is the formal and tú is the familiar. Here’s the beautiful part: in Spanish, when you pray, you address God as Tú, not Usted. God has taken on the familiar. He’s invited us to use His first name.

In the Old testament it also indicates that man could not see God’s face. The Israelites couldn’t be close or intimate with God; they essentially had to lower their eyes in His presence. But now, under the new covenant, it’s as though God is saying, “Come ahead, look Me in the eyes and call out to Me by name…Let Me look into you eyes and call your name…I want a relationship with you, and we can now connect in a way that wasn’t possible before.”

God desires our intimacy and friendship more than anything else. He wants to have us call Him by name.