God Knows Your Name

Have you ever noticed how many names are in the Bible? There are a ton of them. 

What's most interesting to me about these names is that a good number of them, very many indeed, are not the names of God's people. They are the names of God's enemies. Or citizens of the nations of not-God's-people. Or seemingly random folk who live and serve somewhere else. 

That's the case in Esther, where we are told the names - more than once - of Ahasuerus's servants. Servants in a foreign land. Guys who served a king who did not serve the Lord. Guys who served in a nation that was about to order the mass slaughter of all Jews, of all God's people. 

God still lists them by name. We may not know who they are. We may not see their names more than once (and in many cases, we don't). We get no follow-up, no more details about who they were. No indication that their role was anything bigger, really, than existing in a place that intersected the journey of God's people somewhere, somehow. And yet, God lists them by name. 

This is good news. 

As a Christian, as someone who knows how much God loves me, it can sometimes be difficult for me to believe that He remembers me, that He knows my name, that He pays any mind to my existence. These are what we call the hard days.

But even moreso for those who don't know God at all. For those who walk into our lives searching, seeking, wondering if there might be a God out there for real. Wondering if He cares.

We tell them that He loves them, but how are they supposed to believe that? We tell them that He knows their name, but how could He when they don't know His? We tell them that He's known them since before they were born, since He knit them together in their mother's womb, but it seems completely unbelievable. Certainly, God knows the name of His Davids, His Pauls, His Peters, His Johns, but how could He know the name of little old me? 

So we show them passages like the ones we find in Esther, passages where men and women who don't even know God and, often, don't even care to know God, are named. By name. In the middle of the story He's already telling. 

We show them the passages. We point them out. We highlight them, underline them, draw circles around them. 

Then, draw circles around our seekers and tell them they're in, too. 

Friend, God knows your name.

Promise.