DAILY BYTE
This week we are continuing with our series on the Lord’s Prayer and will be focussing on the phrase – ‘Hallowed be your name.’
After the opening address, it is the first thing Jesus tells us to ask God to do. It heads the list, it is central, overarching and all-encompassing: To cause God’s name to be made sacred, sanctified and holy.
‘Hallowed be your name’ – it is so terribly easy to miss. Have you ever read a book where the author is just waffling on and on, and as you sit there reading you find yourself missing whole chunks of what is being said (it might be happening to you right now for instance)?
Well, that’s what we tend to do with this line of the Lord’s Prayer.
We say it but we don’t hear it.
It doesn’t fully compute or register because we just don’t really get it. No offence but we don’t. We don’t truly understand what we are saying but we say it anyway because we are taught to.
Like the little boy who prayed ‘Our Father in heaven, Harold is your name.’
With that in mind, this week’s devotions will begin by making a couple of explanations. Firstly, we need to look more carefully at the Biblical concept of names. In our culture, we just don’t understand names like they did in Jesus’ time. A name was everything in the Bible, for it was understood to capture the very essence of a person.
The names people were give always had significance, for instance, Nabal, (a man who foolishly offended King David), well, the name Nabal means ‘fool’. Or what about red haired Esau with the fiery temper? Well, the name Esau means ‘Red’.
If a person went through a significant life change, then often their name would change to reflect that. For example, Abram means ‘father’ but after receiving God’s promise to bless him with a whole nation of children, he had his name changed to Abraham which means ‘father of multitudes’. Simon the disciple became Peter the ‘rock’. Saul became Paul and so on.
In fact, names were so significant in the ancient Near East that they were considered part of someone’s soul because they were believed to characterise that soul. Like ‘Red’ characterised Esau’s fiery soul and looks, or ‘Fool’ summed up Nabel’s poor decision making abilities.
To know that name of someone was to know their essence – it gave you some sort of a handle on them.
Read today’s focus reading carefully – the story of Moses’ call – what do you learn from this story regarding God’s name?
PRAY AS YOU GO
Gracious God, you call us and know us by our names. We ask that through the course of this week, you would teach us what it means to ‘hallow your name’. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Exodus 3. 12-15 NIV
And God said, "I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain."
Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?"
God said to Moses, "I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' "
God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.
