I wouldn’t say I had an abusive childhood, but I had my fair share of hard, angry words spoken into my life by my father. It was usually to do with the things that children deal with: a school subject they don’t like and therefore don’t perform very well in the exams. Or some plates left unwashed or floors not swept. Nothing major that would justify being told: ‘you’re good for nothing”, “you won’t amount to anything”, “why can’t you be more like….(fill in the name of one of their friend’s children who was more confident, articulate and doing better in school than I was at the time.)
The thing about words is that they’re insidious. They hang in the atmosphere. They ooze into your ears and make their way into your brain and they stay there until you make an effort to clean out the mess of messages and write a new script for yourself.
As we travel through the journey of life, we meet people who speak different things into our lives; people who call us different names: lazy, privileged, intelligent, hardworking, easy going, intense, woman of easy virtue, wife material. Ah, the last one got me. Years ago, I was having an intense conversation with a work colleague. I stuck to my position because I was sure of my facts and he threw an emotional curve ball at me, saying, ‘women like you are not wife material; men don’t like women who win arguments.” I gave him a flip answer but I tell you, that remark cut deep and settled. Especially as my thirties strolled past and I entered my forties and hadn’t married yet. I felt those words, probably long forgotten by the gentleman, defined my new identity. That was who I was: a woman who was not wife material. Amazing how people’s definitions of us tend to limit and confine us. Just like the woman at the well. Remember her?
When we first meet her in the Bible, she’s referred to as a Samaritan woman whom Jesus asks to fetch Him a drink of water. The conversation quickly segues into a discussion about what matters most: how to get living water of salvation. And just as only the Son of God would do, the conversation moves seamlessly to a deeply personal and somewhat shameful issue; the subject of her six husbands. But Jesus doesn’t linger on the subject. To my mind, He mentions it just so she would know that He knew what people called her and to reassure her that He loved her despite that past and that her name would change once she drank of the living waters and learnt to be a ‘true worshiper who would ‘worship the Father in spirit and truth.’
What? This Samaritan woman who had asked of Jesus, ‘You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?’ She was mentioned by Jesus, the Son of God in the same breath as true worshipers! She whose story did not sound beautiful to begin with had a life-transforming encounter with Jesus at the well and became an evangelist. She was so persuasive that the people of Sychar said of her, “We no longer believe just because of what you said, now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Saviour of the world.”(John 4: 45) She changed the mind of many of the Samaritans in that town. That’s a lot of people to evangelize. And it all happened because she believed, accepted and lived out the new name Jesus gave her.
Her name changed. Just like that. Her heart desired something more lasting than ordinary water. Jesus offered her the eternally refreshing water of salvation and changed her destiny. Our destinies are changed just like that too when we have a defining encounter with Jesus.
As our destinies change, so do past hurts diminish until they can’t affect us negatively anymore; they become mere lessons we can look back at and use to help others as they too learn, prayerfully to shrug off old, hurtful tags and seek to find their real names in Christ Jesus. How quickly our names are changed from adulterer, thief, liar, procrastinator, and good for nothing to son of God; to child of the Most High God. With a simple act of belief, conviction, release and obedience, we experience and enjoy a permanent change of name. Hallelujah!
So, what’s in a name? If it’s a name the world calls me, then it doesn’t matter much because it will change as soon as I realise and accept that my Father calls me Beloved; the Apple of His Eye; the one whose name is tattooed on His palms; the one He loves with an eternal love. I wouldn’t trade those names for anything else. Would you?