Daily Manna · Day 92 · April 2
Called by Name
“Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.”
What is the difference between a label and a name? This week someone may have used a label for you: the difficult one, the one who fell apart, the divorced one, the guy from that department. You might say that a name is only a word too, so why should it be any different?
The verse answers by showing who is speaking and what He has done before He names anyone. It opens, "thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel." "Created" and "formed" are words from the first chapters of Genesis, so God is reminding His people that He is the One who made them. Then He says, "I have redeemed thee." To redeem is to buy something back by paying a price for it. Only after those two things does He name them: "I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine."
So the name comes last, and it rests on what came before it. A label is stuck on you by someone who has nothing invested in you and paid nothing for you. This name is spoken by the One who made you and then bought you back when you were lost. That is a completely different kind of speaking.
Look at the people He said it to. They had earned every label there was. He calls them Jacob, the name of a man who tricked his own father, and He calls them Israel, the new name God gave that same man later. Both names are in the one sentence. God does not use the second name to pretend the first one never happened.
The next verse is not a comfortable one. God speaks of waters His people will pass through and fire they will walk into: "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee." Belonging to Him does not keep you out of the flood. It holds you while you are in it.
So when a label comes at you again this week, you do not have to argue with it. Let the older word stand behind it, the word of the One who made you, paid for you and called you His own. Then notice which of the two you really believe. His word was spoken first, and it will outlast the label.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 92 is Sung in a Cave (Psalm 57:7).