Have you ever thought about all of the names that you go by in the span of a day? What about a lifetime?
Some of the names I have been called are: sister, daughter, friend, teacher, auntie, sugar (or just shug here in the south), girlfriend, Miss, Madame, darlin’, love, care bear, even mom! None of those is actually my name, Sarah. How many people actually call you by your name?
If you are a teacher, you may forget that you have an actual first name, because no one ever says it. In French, “Je m’appelle” literally means “I call myself”. For 23 years, 10 months of the year I called myself Ms. Kempf or just Madame. It’s the armor I put on each day in order to face the challenges that I would encounter in my classroom. There were times that I wondered where Sarah had gone. There are still students I see every once in awhile and they all still call me Madame, because that’s “my name”.
What we call each other shows what kind of relationship we have, formal or informal, close, or just polite. Who are you when it’s just you? Do you call yourself by the names other people call you (good or bad) or do you call yourself “child of God”, “beloved”? Stop and think about that for a moment. Let that sink in. God calls me beloved. He calls me HIS. I am chosen. I am loved. Who am I to argue with that?
It took me a little while to find Sarah again when I switched to teaching online. I needed reminding that I am more than all of my names. I can be several of them at once. What doesn’t change whether you call me sweet pea or something more formal, I know to whom I belong, do you?
Tomorrow morning when you wake up, I challenge you to look in the mirror and declare who you are, a child of God. Even better, I challenge you to figure out what that means in your life.
