September 23rd

Given a New Name

            “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.  To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.”

Revelation 2:17

            The book of Revelations begins with letters to seven churches.  To the church in Pergamum the message is sent with a warning and an encouragement.  They are warned to avoid heresy and falling to the temptation and persecution around them.  Then they are encouraged with the passage from above.

            “To the one who conquers,”  This is not encouraging the believers to stage a hostile takeover of Pergamum.  This is an encouragement to endure…to choose love over fear…to choose faithful obedience over the destructive impulses of the flesh.  All manner of sin and depravity was available to the believers and they were called to conquer their own weaknesses and temptations in living lives that were pure in the midst of a fallen world.

            “I will give some of the hidden mana,”  God will give miraculous sustenance…food that we did not know we needed.  Fighting against our temptations is tiring with little payoff.  God promises that He will give us the energy that we need to fight the good fight.

            “I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone…”  There is a name that God has for us that no one else knows.  There is an identity that He sees that is invisible to everyone else.  He looks at me and sees the Truth of who I am in all of my strengths and all of my weaknesses.  He sees all the successes and all the failures and writes a name on a stone that is my identity.  And he whispers it in secret to my ear because it is a supremely vulnerable thing to be so known and so exposed.

            God has a new name for our children, and it has nothing to do with their diagnosis.  My son’s rock says nothing about autism.  It says nothing about loneliness and social awkwardness and fleeing rooms.  His true identity is wrapped up in his courage and his compassion and his generosity and his smile and a thousand other attributes that God sees.  When my son comes face to face with His creator, God will utter this new name and my son will leap for he is finally knows as he truly is, not just how we have seen him over the years.

            It is hard enough to know someone who has no developmental issues or social issues or physical issues.  It requires listening and asking questions and investing time into moving past the masks that we wear in public.  Getting to know someone with special needs is much harder because, even if they want to draw close to you, often they do not know how to make that happen.  God can cut through all the layers, all the baggage, all the obstacles and speak to us heart to heart.

            That is a love that our children are starving for.

A moment to reflect:

Who are you?  What is God’s name for you?