Tuesday, September 8, 2009

He knows your name

Dear YL Capernaum Teammates

What is your favorite part of the Bible? In my reading, I just happened to land on one of my favorites. It’s the genealogies in I Chronicles. Endless lists of hard to pronounce names with an occasional descriptor of the person. I am not kidding, or drunk. I really love this! I mean how cool is it that God loves people so much that He puts their names in Scripture for all recorded times. How cool is it that He doesn’t share an impersonal history with us but personalizes history with names.

In our increasingly impersonal high tech world, we forget how sacred names were to the Hebrew people. They were sacred because names are sacred to God. He revealed Himself to Moses with a name – I AM. That name became sacred to the Hebrews, and God returned the favor by recording their names to say how sacred they were to Him.

If the Bible was written today, I believe there is a good chance some of our names would be on one of those glorious lists…..

John of Norfolk, Skeeter of Greenville, Becki of Diablo Valley, Sean of Dallas, Jen of Minneapolis, Jenny of Springfield, Pam and Suzanne of Nashville, Allie of Las Vegas, Zhanna of Kazakhstan, and on and on it would go, a sacred celebration of God’s people.

We are named, we are known, we are celebrated and we are sent to kids who are often known by their disability rather than by their name. But God through you and me has not forgotten them. We get to tell kids that Jesus knows your name and calls you by name and that He intends to write your name in the eternal book of Life.

Take a look at your kid’s directory, or at your YL Capernaum directory. Let your eyes linger on those names. Celebrate those names and pray for those names. As a matter of fact, begin reading I Chronicles and add your name and some of your friends’ names. Now call a kid and call an YL Capernaum staff person you do not know and tell them Jesus knows your name and that their name and yours is in His book.

My name is Nick of San Jose, and Jesus knows my name,

Nick

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