Daily Beauty, Day #3: Names

There’s something beautiful about having a name.

My encounters with names today have been nothing out of the ordinary. But as I think about names– things that are so essential that we rarely pause to give them reflection- I realize that there is so much beauty in the fact that we all have one.

Names are very meaningful to me. It is different when someone uses your name when addressing you than when they do not. It is personal. More intimate somehow. It feels like they know you, like they see you. Perhaps it is the reminder that you are you, that your name belongs to and represents your person, the uniqueness that is yours alone.

When someone calls us by name, we often do not even notice. We hear our own names so frequently that we may be desensitized by the sound. But what if every time we heard our name or spoke someone else’s, we opened our eyes to the humanity inherent in a name? What if when we heard our names, we remembered that we are special and that we are called to be someone that no one else has ever been or ever will be?

I think there is something profoundly beautiful in that. God calls us by name as well, calls us to come to Him, into the everlasting arms where we belong. He calls us by name because He knows us… because He sees us. We are never invisible to Him. He never forgets our names or overlooks us in the crowd.

We all have a name. There is nothing unusual or revolutionary in that. But perhaps there would be if we remembered what it means to have a name during the most usual and ordinary of moments.