Names

Just navigated onto my blog and realized the current ad purports to answer key questions about one's life by analyzing one's name and date of birth.  Huh.  Disclaimer: while I can set some parameters on the ads (no gambling, etc.), I don't hand-pick each advertisement.  The ad I just noticed, however, taps into our human need to seek meaning in our lives.  Do you know the story of your name?  I learned a while back that I was named after Laura Ingalls Wilder.  While my day-to-day existence may share little in common with this other Laura, I'm tickled and occasionally inspired by the comparison. 

I've noticed that we often come to uncannily resemble our names.  My daughter has required the gravitas of her three-syllable moniker since birth.  I guess we'll never know if she would have been the same person, had we named her "Fifi."  She is so patently NOT a Fifi that the question defies comprehension. 

How cool, then, that we can lay claim to another title -- "child of God."  In baptism, I share this name with not-Fifi and a multitude of Christians in every time and place.  Being "child of God" means we are patently NOT "lost," or "alone," or "without a place."  Our title indicates to whom we belong.  This name fundamentally marks us with an identity; this name we now resemble.  That's a far greater answer to the mystery of one's life than any Web site could provide.