A boy in her class gave it to her when she was eleven and it is what people call her at sixty-three.
It was not cruel exactly. That is the thing about it that has made it impossible to complain about for fifty-two years. It was a shortening, and it was said with a laugh, and by the end of that first week the teachers were using it, and by the end of that year her own mother had picked it up.
She answered to it. That was the whole mechanism. Somebody said a word at her, and she turned her head, and turning her head was the agreement, and she was eleven and did not know that turning your head is a form of consent.
Fifty-two years later there are people at her own table who do not know her actual name.
And the word means something. It is not a neutral sound. It carries a suggestion about what sort of person she is, and it is a small suggestion and a diminishing one, and she has spent five decades quietly living inside a description a boy of eleven made up in about a second and a half.
She has never once said out loud that she does not like it. It would seem an enormous thing to raise now, over a word everybody says fondly, and so she has not raised it, and she will not.
Words get eaten, and then they are in you
Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O LORD God of hosts (Jeremiah 15:16).
Two halves and both of them matter for a woman with a word stuck to her.
The first half is a picture of taking words in. I did eat them. Not read them, not agreed with them; ate them, which is the plainest possible way of saying that a word can go inside a person and become part of what they are made of.
Which is exactly what happened to you at eleven, except with a different word and a different source.
And then the second half, which is the reason he can say the first: for I am called by thy name.
He belongs to God, God's name is on him, and therefore God's words are the ones he takes in.
You have a name on you that decides which words belong in you. That is the logic of the verse, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old word begin to lose its grip, because Scripture says the word of God is living and powerful and divides right down to the joints and the marrow.
Answering is not the same as agreeing
Now let me say the kind thing, because you have carried a small shame about this and it does not belong to you.
You did not accept that name. You answered to it, which at eleven is not a choice; it is a reflex, and every child in every school does it, and the ones who resist get it worse.
And the reason it has held for fifty-two years is not weakness. It is that the cost of raising it has gone up every single year, and by about the fifteenth year it had become unraisable, because a word that everybody says fondly cannot be objected to without the objector looking like the difficult one.
That is not a moral failure. That is arithmetic, and you did the arithmetic correctly.
You are not what a boy of eleven decided in a second and a half. The word says God calls things that be not as though they were (Romans 4:17), which means the naming that counts runs from God outward, and it is the Holy Spirit who slowly makes a person's true name louder than an old one without requiring a public scene.
What to do when the outside cannot change
I am going to be practical, because you are and because the useful thing here is not a confrontation.
You are probably not going to change what that table calls you, and I am not going to ask you to. That is a real cost of a real life and you have already weighed it more carefully than I could.
What can change is what you eat.
A word said over you by other people goes in through the ear. A word said by you, out loud, about what God calls you, goes in a different way, and Jeremiah's picture is deliberately about ingestion rather than about being addressed.
You are able to take in a word that came from God, whatever anybody at your table says. Scripture puts the eating and the being-called-by-His-name in one verse, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a swallowed word do its work over time, quietly, in a woman who is not making a fuss about anything.
So today the old word gets said once, out loud, without heat, and then you put a different one in your mouth.
Say it once. Not to complain about it and not to make a case; just to say it plainly in your own voice, which is a thing you have never once done, because a word you only ever answer to is a word you have never actually said.
And then read the verse, and land on the second half, and say it in the first person: I am called by Your name.
That is what goes in today. Not out at the table. In, in a chair, in your own voice, where the eating happens.
You are called by God's name, and that is the naming with authority behind it. The word puts eating His words and being called by His name in the same sentence, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a swallowed word begin to outweigh a spoken one over time.
Declare this over yourself
Now speak, sitting where you sit. You are in Christ, and the name He has put on you was given to you and it did not come from anybody's classroom. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is the one who lands it. What God does about that table and what they call you is His to decide, and He may leave it exactly as it has always been. What He has said about whose name is on you is not a matter for the table.
- Word a boy handed me when I was eleven, you are a sound and you are not a description of me. Scripture says I am called by Thy name, O LORD God of hosts, and that naming came from higher up than a classroom.
- Habit of turning my head to it, you are ended in this chair today. In the name of Jesus I eat a different word, because the word says His words were found and I did eat them, and eating is not the same as being addressed.
- Father, I am called by Your name and Your words are what I am taking in today. I thank You that by Your Spirit a swallowed word does its work quietly, and I do not have to make a scene at anybody's table for this to be true.
Jeremiah 15:16
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
