Names
What’s in a name? Why would a certain name be used? Might it describe a certain way of doing things, a certain methodology? Might that name imply a certain result?
There’s a certain company in our area whose name makes me laugh every time I see their trucks and equipment pass me on our highways: DYNAMITE LANDSCAPING
Is this how they do business? If I buy somebody the Moon, and cannot take them there, can I bring a Moonscape to them? Is this the company I call for this service?
I’m sorry. I’m probably too weird, and shouldn’t think this way, but I have similar thoughts about a restaurant entrée, chicken “cordon bleu.” The French translation is “blue cord.” I have often wondered, “Is this how they dispatch the chicken, so I can have my dinner? They choke it with a blue cord?” I know, I’m probably too weird, and I possibly “over-think” some things. —Sorry!
Names are important to all of us. A name describes a person, an organization, a church, a nation. Our national name, for instance, says much about us as a people.
America: The “new” continent, which was in the way of Columbus’ voyage to the Far East. It had to be considered, and it had to worked in to an old way of thinking about our world. Earth is bigger than people had thought!
States: Groups of people with common landforms and industry, with special ways of doing things and special patterns of speech, which are unique to themselves and different from their neighbors.
United: An over-arching principle that draws individual entities into a greater good than just themselves. It’s a call to selflessness, to help one’s neighbor in times of need and in daily life.
The idea of uniting individuals into a greater good is not a new one. It started in the Garden of Eden, with God’s observation that ”It is not good that man should be alone.” (Gen. 2:18) In His mercy and tenderness, God created man’s dearest friend and companion, his wife, to share the joys and burdens of life.
The call for unity is seen in Jesus’ High Priestly prayer in John 17, wherein Jesus expressed the divine desire that all of God’s Children be united in thought and heart (v. 11), so that the divergent groups of people called together to be saints would experience the joy of Jesus in their unity (v. 13), and so that the world would be convinced that God had sent His one and only Son to redeem mankind (v. 23).
As the churches of Christ, how well are we fulfilling Jesus’ desire, to bring the world to Him? Are we using “dynamite and blue cords” against one’s sins, or are we attracting them with God’s love? (See John 12:32.)
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