Baby Names
In a few months, my daughter and son-in-law, Kathy and Steve,
are expecting their first child. To say that we are all excited about this
little one's arrival is an understatement. I can't wait to meet Skippy. Yep,
you heard right: Skippy! Okay, maybe that is not the name that they have chosen
for their daughter. However, it is the one that I have selected. Back when they
were searching for a name, I called Kathy and told them that I had come up with
one. It dawned on me as I was eating my toast and peanut butter at breakfast:
Skippy! All I heard was an all too familiar groan on the other end of the line.
I have been informed that as well thought out as my recommendation was, it
would not be the baby's name.
I love
Skippy. Even before she is born, before she has accomplished the inevitable
achievements that her rich family heritage guarantees, before the Nobel Prize
and the Rhodes Scholarship, I love her. Okay, admittedly, Skippy is most likely
a fitting name because she comes from a bunch of nuts! Truth is, in our family,
she will be our pride and joy if she can bait her own hook and catch a limit of
Walleye. We might as well be honest: Skippy is up against it. She is being born
into a world that has gone mad. Evil abounds. She is being born into the lives
of people who feel keenly their weaknesses. Her parents live in Toronto. (Don't take
offense dear Toronto
friends. It's just hard to teach a kid to catch Walleye in Don Mills.) Whether
you feel the debate on a child's development is more nature than nurture, or
nurture than nature, Skippy has some hurdles ahead.
Did I tell
you that I love Skippy?! I say this because I believe that the familial love
that develops for a child during the forty weeks of pregnancy really does
provide an important living metaphor for the incredible reality of God's love
for His people. God's love for us precedes anything that we have ever done. In
fact, the marvel of God's love is that God has loved us when He was fully aware
of everything that would go wrong with humanity and how each of us would be a
willing contributor to the sin and corruption that has long plagued our race.
The hope of humanity is not in its ability to earn the love of God. It is in
the fact that God is love and His love flows from His nature and His heart. His
love is so great that it doesn't simply turn a grandfatherly blind eye to our
obvious faults and flaws. He looks straight at our selfish choices, sinful
acts, and hateful behaviours, and determines to deal justly with our guilt and
yet, mercifully with our souls. This is no weak love filled with self-serving
ambition. He doesn't love me so that He can feel better about Himself. He loves
me because that is who He is.
This, then,
of course, is my hope. My hope is that if God loves me in spite of a thousand
reasons why I am unlovable and if He freely chooses to do whatever it takes to
save me from myself, from sin, and ultimately from the evil of the world, then
the question is not: "What am I up against?" The question is this:
"If God is for me, who or what can be against me?"
Do you know
what God has nick-named me? He has called me "Beloved". That's a bit
more profound than "Skippy". In 1 John 3:1 the apostle John expresses
the wonder of God's love for us: "See
what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called the
children of God; and so we are!" Then, in the fourth chapter, John
repeatedly calls his audience "Beloved". It is clear that he calls
them this not simply because as an apostle, he cares about them. He calls us
"Beloved" because God Himself has loved us with an incredibly
forgiving and unfailing love. Listen to John's words: "Beloved, let us love one another, for love
is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who
does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God
is manifested among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we
might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that
He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if
God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."[1]
God's love is not due to our worthiness but a tribute to His. Linger over that
miracle for awhile today, "Beloved". God loves us truly, deeply, and
forever!
I love Skippy.
I can't wait to meet her. I am not worried about all the "jams" that
she might get into (sorry, I couldn't resist that one!). My hope is in a Love
that is greater than all our sins and struggles. There is a God who has loved
Skippy's grandparents and parents long before they were born and gave His Son
to save them. My prayer for her is that she might come to know and to trust
this love early and for always. I am praying for her physical birth with
excitement. I am praying for spiritual "birth" with even more
passion. What a joy for her to wake up one day and hear with the ears of faith,
the nickname her heavenly Father has given her: "Beloved." I want her
to hear in her heart from the eternal God: "I love you, Skippy! I always
have!" Please pray for her with me.
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