The Naming - Part 1

Names are powerful. A simple combination of letters has so much meaning. Names can be loved or hated, shouted with joy or spat with contempt. They can remind us of those we hold close in our hearts - those who have gone on before us and leave their memory bottled up in that simple combination of letters.

My name irked me as a child. I had (and still have I suppose) a fairly exuberant personality and there is nothing I dislike more than being a wallflower. Imagine my dismay when I realized in elementary school that there were quite a few girls in my class with the same name. A few years later I looked up names and there it was: Jessica was the #1 girl name in the US in 1982. So we had to distinguish ourselves by Jess, Jessie, Jessica C., etc. I vowed when I was 9 to name my daughter Fuschia. That would show my mom.

21 years later, I have kids named Jack, Kate, and Noah.

Irony.

About 5 months or so into the process of adopting our little girl, we started talking about names. I remember clearly one morning in October, cutting Matt's hair before worship on Sunday. I told him that I really wanted to pick out her name so I could think of her and pray for her by name.

Giving someone a name is special. It implies thought and care. I wanted to name my little girl before I saw her face, before I held her in my arms. Before she was legally ours, I wanted to bestow a name on her.

Giving an orphan a name is proclaiming that she has a place in this world, a group of people with whom to belong.

While discussing it one morning, Matt brought up a girls name I had mentioned before, when I was pregnant with Katie. It's unusual - found in the New Testament. Matt likes traditional names so for him to suggest this name was very interesting. Once he assured me he was serious, I looked up the chapters to the story:

^{Mark 21-24} After Jesus crossed over by boat, a large crowd met him at the seaside. One of the meeting-place leaders named Jairus came. When he saw Jesus, he fell to his knees, beside himself as he begged, “My dear daughter is at death’s door. Come and lay hands on her so she will get well and live.” Jesus went with him, the whole crowd tagging along, pushing and jostling him.

³⁵ While he was still talking, some people came from the leader’s house and told him, “Your daughter is dead. Why bother the Teacher any more?”

³⁶ Jesus overheard what they were talking about and said to the leader, “Don’t listen to them; just trust me.”

^37-40 He permitted no one to go in with him except Peter, James, and John. They entered the leader’s house and pushed their way through the gossips looking for a story and neighbors bringing in casseroles. Jesus was abrupt: “Why all this busybody grief and gossip? This child isn’t dead; she’s sleeping.” Provoked to sarcasm, they told him he didn’t know what he was talking about.

^40-43 But when he had sent them all out, he took the child’s father and mother, along with his companions, and entered the child’s room. He clasped the girl’s hand and said, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Little girl, get up.” At that, she was up and walking around! This girl was twelve years of age. They, of course, were all beside themselves with joy.

Talitha - little girl in Aramaic (pronounced like Tabitha with a l - emphasis on the first syllable). A story of a precious little one who was dead - and then alive. I read the story and got chills. This was her name. 

Talitha, you are ours. You belong. You are loved.

This is no savior complex for us. The nitty gritty truth at the heart of adoption has nothing to do with us but with God. Even while we ignored him and threw tantrums like a toddler, He loved us. Like petulant children who wail and cry at a parent for not letting them do something dangerous, we were fools and tried to steer the course of our own lives. 

But He loved us. And pursued us with relentless passion. He brought us into His glorious light and adopted us as sons - piecing us together into His family and calling us His own. 

We are His. We belong. We are loved.

There is nothing in this story that catapults us into the spotlight. Two heroic, unselfish people who sacrifice it all so a poor orphan can someday thank her rescuers. This is not that at all.

The truth is that we love because He first loved us.

We give and help and serve because He is good and kind to us.

We rescue because we, in fact, are the rescued.

He has given us life -real life. Not the waking, eating, breathing, sleeping, existing life. But the on and on and on forever life. The exploding with good things life. The life that only the once held captive and now set free can really live. 

Talitha koum. Get up, little girl - it's time for life.