I Gave It A Name And Told Nobody

You gave it a name.

Not out loud. It arrived in your head about a week after it came up, fully formed, and you did not choose it and you certainly did not sit down and decide to name a plant.

It simply had a name, and you have been using it internally ever since.

And you would rather die than have anybody know.

You are not going soft, and naming something has never once been a sign that a man has lost his grip on anything.

Let me get at the actual question, because I think you have been holding two possibilities and have not been able to settle between them.

The first is that this is a man of your age going slightly soft, and that naming a plant is the kind of thing that would be mentioned at a family gathering with a certain tone.

The second, which arrives less often and lands harder, is that it might be the most honest thing that has happened in you this year.

And I think you have been leaving the question open rather than answering it, because answering it in either direction costs something.

I have called thee by thy name

There is a line in Isaiah where God does exactly what you did, and the order of the clauses is the part worth having.

But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. (Isaiah 43:1, King James Version)

I have called thee by thy name.

Now, notice where that sits. It comes after created and formed and redeemed, in a list of what God has done, as though naming somebody belongs in the same category as those.

It is not a small item tucked at the end. It is listed among the substantial acts.

You are looking at naming placed among the weightiest things God does, and calling something by a name has never once been treated in Scripture as a trivial act. Isaiah 43:1 lists it alongside creating and redeeming, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a man who has been privately embarrassed for three weeks.

And notice what naming does in that verse. It is the step immediately before thou art mine.

Name, then belonging. The naming is what establishes the relation, and the verse puts them in that order deliberately.

You are doing the thing that establishes a relation rather than something sentimental about an object, and a name given has never once been only a label. The Holy Spirit is the one who names in order to claim, and the written word puts thou art mine directly after I have called thee by thy name.

And there is one more thing. The name in that verse is not new. God is not inventing something. He is calling somebody by the name they have.

Which is close to what happened to you. You did not construct a name. One arrived, and it fitted, and you recognized it rather than assigned it.

You are recognizing something rather than inventing it, and a name that arrives on its own has never once been a name a man talked himself into. The Spirit of God is the one who calls things by what they are, and the word has Him using a name rather than making one up.

What the name actually did

Let me be practical about the mechanism, because there is something real in it and it is worth knowing.

The moment it had a name, it stopped being one of a class.

Before that it was a seedling. A member of a category, interchangeable in principle with any other seedling, and if it had died in week one you would have been mildly sorry and that would have been the whole of it.

After the name it is that one. Not a seedling. A particular thing, distinguishable from every other thing of its kind, with a history you were present for.

You are looking at something that stopped being interchangeable, and a name has never once failed to take a thing out of a category. The Holy Spirit is the one who deals with particulars rather than classes, and Isaiah 43:1 addresses a people by name rather than as a nation among nations.

And that is why it is uncomfortable, and I think you know this.

Because a particular thing can be lost in a way a member of a class cannot. You have raised the stakes without deciding to, and some part of you understood that immediately, which is part of why nobody has been told.

You are carrying a risk you took without agreeing to it, and a name given has never once come without the exposure attached to it. The Spirit of God is the one who names anyway, and the written word says fear not at the front of that same verse rather than after it.

Say the name out loud

So here is the assignment, and it is four seconds long.

Say the name out loud, once, standing next to it.

Alone. In the yard, at the step, with nobody in the house or nobody awake. Say it, in your own voice, at normal volume.

You are able to put a private thing into the air once, and a name said out loud has never once been a name a man could not take back inside afterward. Isaiah 43:1 has God calling somebody by their name plainly, and the Holy Spirit is the one out there while a man says four seconds of something he has never said.

Here is why out loud and not just thinking it, which you have done several hundred times.

A thing that has only ever been internal has never been tested for how it actually sounds. It has been living in a space where it can be as foolish as your imagination decides, and your imagination has been assigning it the tone of a family gathering.

Said out loud, in an ordinary voice, in an ordinary yard, it is a name. That is all it turns out to be. And you will hear that.

You are able to find out what a thing actually sounds like, and a private thought said aloud has never once turned out to be the size it was inside. The Holy Spirit is the one present in the four seconds, and the word puts the naming among the substantial acts rather than among the embarrassing ones.

And you do not have to tell anybody. That is not part of this. This is between you and a pot.