Living Under a Name: Starting the Year with Jesus
The world begins the new year with lists. Goals. Resolutions. Predictions. We try to measure time as if we could control it, as if we could master what is coming. The church begins differently. Quietly. Almost stubbornly. We begin not with plans, but with a name . Eight days after his birth, a child is carried into the light of the law and given the name spoken over him before he ever took a breath: Jesus . Before he teaches, before he heals, before he is followed or rejected, he is named. And the church insists that this is where every year should begin—not with what we hope to become, but with who God has already given to us. A Blessing That Holds In Numbers, God gives Israel a blessing: "The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace." The words are gentle, almost like a lullaby. But there is something deeper here: God places his own name upon the people....