Suggested Readings: Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16, Exodus 6:1-13, Acts 7:35-42
Names of God
These readings all present a story about the power of being named and, thus, of being known.
In the Psalm, God’s promise of protection—that “no harm will overtake you”—seems to derive from the fact that the Psalmist knows God’s name. Psalm 91:14 (“I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.”)
In Exodus, God is speaking to Moses and talking about how he previously disclosed his name(s): “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty.” But, then God reveals that one of his names He held back even from these fathers of the faith: “… but by my name the Lord I did not make myself fully known to them.” (The Hebrew word for “the Lord” translates to “I am.”). He promises Moses that he will free the Israelites from the Egyptians and that they will know his name:
I will take you as my own people, … Then you will know that I am the Lord.
But Moses has a hard time sharing this news with the people. It was hard for the people to know God’s name for two different reasons—they refused to listen “because of their discouragement” and because of their “harsh labor.”
In Acts, the heartbreak of not being truly known is also played out in Moses’s own story. The Israelites flippantly ask Moses, “Who made you ruler and judge?” They deny knowing Moses a second time when they reject him and God by making an idol in the form of a calf, saying, “As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!”
The Israelites are trying to find the protection of a higher power but only looking to “what their own hands had made.” The name of God calls us out of this faulty loop—it draws our attention upward and outward onto the Creator instead of the created.
How can you allow God to be named in your life—and, thus, to be more truly known to you? May God remove all the discouragements and harsh labors that keep you from listening. What name is God whispering into your soul today?
Pray: God, thank you for sharing your name, ________, with me.
Kristi Arth
