What’s in a Name?

I am terrible with names, and I’m constantly mixing up names and faces.  I reached a landmark for me this weekend in that I now know the names of my immediate two next door neighbors.  For about a year, I didn’t.  I’m sure at some point when we first met, they told me, but I just forgot.  I had to resort to asking a friend of mine to introduce herself to one of my neighbors JUST so that I could find out his name.  And just this past weekend that neighbor mentioned some woman’s name in the context of chores that he had to do, so I’m assuming it’s the name of his wife… man, I hope it’s not the name of his daughter.  That would make for some confusing conversations…

It doesn’t end there… no, not by a long shot.  Thinking right now, I can’t even remember the last name of a college roommate of mine with whom I lived for over a year.  I remember his chinese nickname that we gave him – “ching-wa” (frog), but his actual last name escapes me.  I’m thinking it was Chow?  Also, every Sunday at church, I think I say “hello” to at least a dozen people of whom I don’t have the slightest idea what their first or last name is.  This is aggravated by the fact that I’m a substitute teacher for the youth group at our church and thus have interacted with hundreds of kids who all look the same to me now.  So what I wind up doing is just giving them a nickname based on their approximate age… for guys… 7-10: Squirt,  11-14: Dude, 15-18: Man.  So, a typical confrontation would unfold thusly:  “Hey Mr. Nathan”… “Oh, hey…” (scanning for age) “dude…”

Another thing I do with my neighbors…  I have some Korean neighbors and some Chinese neighbors, and I have NO IDEA who is who.  I’m sure I was made aware of it at some point, but that is lost in history.  So what makes it even weirder is that I feel like I should bow to just the Korean neighbors because I don’t think it’s a customary casual greeting with the Chinese neighbors.  So what typically happens is that I get out of my car and see an asian couple walking by… and in a panic, I half bow and half wave… which looks completely retarded.

So I’m always amazed at people who can remember names and faces even with the most trivial of interactions with them.  It’s something I wish I was much better at doing.  So I think I’m even that much more amazed at how God can know me by name… and that’s just for starters.

By some estimates, in the history of the world, there have been over 106,000,000,000 people born.  To give you a sense of how much that is… imagine, you’re going to a graduation ceremony where speed talkers are announcing the names of everyone born in the world ever.  If they spout out 1 name every two seconds (I figure caveman names like “Ugha” and descriptive native-american names like “Eagle who soars over latrine and must hold breath” average out), they would have to have started somewhere near 4500 B.C. in order to just get to the people who are currently alive by now.  (And you thought YOUR graduation ceremony was long).  That’s a lot of people.

Here’s the kicker.  God knows each of those people so much more intimately than you know anyone you can think of.  And He loves each of those people more than you’ve ever loved anyone in your life.  And He longs for you – solitary you – to spend eternity with Him in heaven.

 “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!  See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.”

– Isaiah 49:15-16