Known By Your Name

One thing I love about pastoring a church who loves children as much as they love making children is to hear the story behind why they name their children as they do. It is among the things that puts a smile on this pastors face.

There is something we all have in common, a name that identifies us. Names have history with a unique – one of a kind story if we are willing to be good listeners and are also like a blank slate to those we’ve never met.

In a modern day like ours where facial recognition technology is advancing on privacy issues, the technology always wants to attach a name to a face. That name is everything.

Sometimes our names are trendy. Sometimes our names are attached to family ancestry. Sometimes our names are connected to influential people, historic heroes, Biblical characteristics, or we just like the way the name sounds.

A few things you may not know about me and Renee.

• Renee’s first name is her mother’s name, Teresa.
• My middle name is my father’s middle name, Robert.

This week I was thinking about my dad. Still to this day, hearing or seeing his name floods my mind with unexpected memories and emotions. He died 5 years ago. In my personal library I have some books and items from his office. These are items that have no monetary value to anyone, and yet they are priceless because they tell part of the story of a legendary man.

Today, my heart is filled with joy to have known the man I called dad, Clyde Robert Thompson, and at the same time filled with excitement to soon meet Clyde Red Thompson, grandson due in March, 2020.