If Only Your Name Remains

     Heli, Matthat, Levi, Melki, and Joseph. Five men in a list of far greater men. Five men with hand-me-down names that I barely glance over while studying.

     Yet, these men are in the lineage of Christ. They’re important, but I still know nothing about them. I couldn’t share a fact beyond ancestry even if I wanted to. Were they tradesmen or merchants? Did they tend flocks or harvest fish? What about the color of their hair or the height of their bodies? How did they fail or succeed in their lives? What sins were their temptors? How did they know God?

     I can’t answer a single question, but neither did Luke. Because it ultimately wasn’t those details that mattered. What mattered was what these men were leading to. Names that when remembered, were remembered as ones pointing towards Christ. And that’s the simple reflection of this devotional. If everything was stripped away and only your name remained, what would it be pointed towards? In a line of salvation and redemption summed up in Jesus, or dawdled about in self and distraction?

Ben C

  ’94 / ’14  Sioux Falls  SD

Doris Jean H

’44 / ’55 Manheim PA