Day 1:
We are highly prized and valued by God, no matter how the world defines us.
Names can be downright cruel! Nicknames, taunting names, or even birthnames can create disparagement, embarrassment or pain around a person's identity.
The worst case in my own experience is that of Throw-'way, a young man in the village where I grew up in my Caribbean Island of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I never knew the details, but according to village lore, Throw-'way had been abandoned at birth.
The scars of the alleged abandonment became etched in his very identity—I never knew him by any other name. But yet, not really! The God who breathed life into this young man is the One who establishes worth. In Luke 12:7, Jesus reassures His disciples that "the very hairs of [their] head are all numbered."
In the Scriptures, we see examples of others, who, like the young man called Throw-'way have been cruelly or unfortunately defined. Perhaps most well-known is the character Jabez mentioned briefly in 1 Chronicles 4: 9-10. The name Jabez sounds like the Hebrew word for pain; it seems his mother wanted to document her painful childbirth experience in his very identity.
The Bruce Wilkinson book, The Prayer of Jabez published in 2000 brought the unfortunate name to widespread attention, but Jabez is not the only one in Scripture, who was unfortunately named. In Genesis 35:18, as Rachel, (who had prayed desperately for children), lay dying in childbirth, she named her son Ben-Oni, which means "son of my trouble." Fortunately for him, his father renamed him Benjamin, which means "son of my right hand."
Perhaps it was because his father himself had also been "rebranded" from an unfortunate birthname. His original name, Jacob, suggested deception (Genesis 25:26). But after his wrestling experience in Genesis 32:22-31, God told Jacob, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” Commentaries generally agree that Israel seems to mean "he struggles with God."
Jacob was not the only person who was given a new, meaningful name by God—Abram and Sarai became Abraham and Sarah, Saul became Paul. And Jesus promises in Revelation 2:17 and Revelation 3:12 to give a "new name" to "the one who is victorious."
A new identity is available to all in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). Available to all the Throw-'ways, the Jabezes, the Ben-Onis, and the Ichabods; to all the abandoned, degraded, devalued, beaten down or discarded; to all the unliked on social media. Available from the God who determined we were worth the sacrifice of His Son.
"Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more (of more value) than many sparrows." ~Luke 12:6-7
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