It's All in a Name

It is an unceasing source of exasperation for my wife, Dale, that I can know people for years without ever quite managing to master their names.

She will say, “Let’s plan to go out to lunch with Janet and John after church,” and I will give her the same frozen look that a deer gives the logging truck moments before the hapless creature is transformed into venison roadkill pancakes.

“Do I know these people?” I will ask.

“Are you serious?” she asks every single time.

You’d think she would learn after about the 300th time.

“Give me a hint,” I will reply.

“They were on the camping trip to the coast last summer, they are part of the worship team so you see them up front almost every week, and we have been in a weekly small group Bible study with them for the past six months.”

“Hmmmm. Not ringing a bell,” I will muse.

At this point my wife will usually begin shaking her head and muttering and generally conveying the impression that she wonders how I manage to remember to put my pants on before I walk out the door to work.

It isn’t as though I don’t try to remember people’s names. I truly do. But my brain simply refuses to cooperate. I think it is because I have amassed so much other information over the years (such as the advertising jingles to Burger King commercials from the 1970s) that there is simply no room for additional input. I can often remember a face, even if I have only a vague recollection of where I may have met the person, but for the life of me I can’t recall his or her name.

It is therefore quite common that as we approach another couple in a social situation, as happened just last week, I will lean over to my wife and whisper, “Help me with their names.”

“That would be Gene and Karin,” Dale will reply.

“Where do we know them from?” I will whisper back.

“They are my parents,” she will retort, sounding downright judgmental.

My wife remembers all kinds of stuff that simply boggles my mind. She recalls exactly what she was wearing on our first date, and she remembers what both of us ordered for dinner. In contrast, I have a very dim memory of inviting her out. I could probably make a decent stab as to roughly what year it was (give or take a few). I love her like crazy, but my mind is wired very differently from hers. I simply cannot match her memory for names and events.

Because I am so frightfully forgetful when it comes to the names of individuals to whom I am not personally married, I really shouldn’t be offended when someone else can’t recall my name. But it does kind of hurt. It hurts because there is something deep within us that cries out to be known. To be important enough to be remembered.

I therefore take enormous comfort in a moving passage from the Bible, where God declares to His people, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine!” (Isaiah 43:1b, NASB).

“I have called you by name.”

He knows who I am.

We are sometimes tempted to think of God as so lofty that He sees us as a mass of humanity, not as individuals. But here He is, calling us by name. Indeed, Jesus said that God is so intimately interested in us that He has counted the very hairs on our head.

Others may forget you, but the God of the universe knows your name. And He will never forget.