The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
He Knows My Name
Dan celebrates his birthday today. After two cancer diagnoses, 2006 and 2017, the subsequent and devastating treatments for both, and a near fatal accident last summer he is celebrating more than just a birthday. He is celebrating the blessing of God’s healing, protection, and longevity. We keep reminding ourselves that God has spared us for a reason and that He is not done with us on earth yet.
But today reminds me also of family anecdotes, including why my husband is Dan and not David. When Dan’s mom was pregnant with him and planning to call him David if she delivered a boy, her good friend Fran Dixon was also pregnant and due around the same time. Fran delivered first and named her son David. Since the two families were very close and their children would be part of each other’s families throughout their formative years, Bruce and Bert chose to call their newborn son Daniel instead of David.
Peoples’ names in the Bible all have meaning and Daniel is no exception. Translated from the Hebrew, it means “God is my judge”. Daniel of the Bible was a prophet during the Babylonian captivity who demonstrated extraordinary faith by serving, worshiping, and openly praying to God, even when it became illegal. God honored him with protection when he was sentenced to the lion’s den and his equally faithful friends when they were thrown into a furnace to be burned.
The most important issue with Dan’s name is that God knew his name even before he was born. Throughout the Old Testament God told a variety of people what to name their children, Isaac for example in Genesis 17:19. Names quite often came from circumstances surrounding the birth as well, as in the case of Ichabod (1 Sam. 4:21) whose name means “no glory” in Hebrew. Born shortly after the defeat of Israel and the loss of the Ark of the Covenant to the Philistines, he was so named because “The glory is departed from Israel: for the ark of God is taken” (1 Sam. 4:22). In the New Testament, the parents of both John the Baptist and Jesus were told not only that they would have sons, but they were also given their sons’ names before they were even born.
According to Isaiah 49:1b, God knows us by name even in our mothers’ wombs. “The LORD has called me from the womb; from my mother’s womb has he made mention of my name.” Not only that, but also He knows us and already has His plans in place for our lives before we are born:
“For You have possessed my inward parts. You have covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvellous are Your works and that my soul knows right well. My substance was not hid from You, when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes did see my substance yet being imperfect, and in Your book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them” (Ps. 139:13-16).
Who else but God is worthy of our praise and adoration, He who formed us from nothing in the hidden mechanisms of our mother’s bodies, even to the point of knowing our names before our parents did. And who else is capable of knowing us so well as to “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).
Happy birthday, Dan, my God-given beloved friend, husband, and spiritual leader.
