Never Anonymous

Never Anonymous

Nameless Women

Read: Isaiah 49:14-16

I was five years old and chomping at the bit. Since children in rural areas didn’t go to kindergarten, I would be going straight into first grade. I dragged my mother down the hallway, and we stopped at the list of names posted by the first classroom. No Dianne there. On the second list, there was a Diane Jones. On the third and last list, we found Dianne Stevens. My little heart sank to the bottom of my new saddle oxfords. Here I stood, ready for my first day of school, and my name wasn’t on the class lists.

The Bible includes many women whose names were left out of the Scriptures. God didn’t give us the name of the woman who saved the city of Thebez by dropping a millstone on the attacker’s head. Scripture doesn’t identify the woman who touched Jesus’ robe for healing, the widow he praised for her sacrificial giving, or the Samaritan woman whose life changed after a conversation with Jesus at a well. We don’t know the names of Peter’s mother-in-law, Noah’s wife, or Jairus’s daughter. Their stories are significant enough to be included in God’s Word, but for some reason, he chose to leave out their names.

It’s easy to feel nameless in our society. While movie stars’ names roll easily off everyone’s tongue, it may seem that no one remembers ours. In the end, it won’t matter how well-known we were, but how well we lived our lives. Once we become God’s children through believing in Jesus, he writes our names in the Lamb’s Book of Life. God compares this to having our names written on the palms of his hands as a constant reminder that we belong to him. No matter how anonymous we sometimes feel, God will never forget us or erase our names. That’s a lot more important than any earthly list, even on the first day of school.

See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.

Isaiah 49:16