What's in a name
Mornin’, everyone!!
It’s 6:13 in the am…
Wow!
Sun’s coming up…The birds are chirping…Down here in Oliver Springs, I’m looking out over fields and cows with coffee in my hands…Ahhhh! My favorite morning smell!
Not cows! Coffee!
I always like coffee better at my house on my porch than at Starbuck’s or wherever…
Mostly because if I haven’t had my coffee yet, I can’t face all those questions they ask you at Starbuck’s!
Like when you order your double caffe mocha frappucino or your iced espresso misto Americano (it’s too early for all those choices!), they ask, “What name should we put on this order?”
Not only do some people have trouble remembering their name before they’re sufficiently caffeinated, but some folks, especially from other countries, have complicated names that can create traffic jams in the line.
One girl in New York City named Shefali Kulkarni, was saying that when they ask her what name they should put on her order, and she answers, “Shefali”, they go, “What?! How do you say it?”
So she says it. Slowly. "Ssshheefaallii."
“How do you spell it?”
“S-h-e-f-a-l-i”.
“Could you do that again?”
“Could you people hurry up?”, the folks in line begin to mumble (we’re in New York remember)…
So she came up with a simpler name just for Starbucks.
“What name on the order, Ma’am?”
“Sheila.”
No questions.
No waiting.
No complaining down the line.
Shefali calls “Sheila” her “coffee name”.
She said that she noticed that a lot of people from other countries have coffee names.
When they ask, “What name for the order?”, instead of “Gulliermo”…or “Bohuslava”…or “Evdokia”…she heard names like “Sue” or “Tom” or “Jill”.
I just wondered what it was like the first time Shefali was in Starbucks with their friends…or her mom…and she got up when they called “Sheila?”
“Sheila?!”
“It’s my ‘coffee name’. Don’t ask.”
Did you know Jesus has a special name just for you? Listen to this…“I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it…”(Rev 2.17)
He has a special name that He calls only you. It’s not because your real name is hard to say or spell. He called someone “Hephzabah” in the Old Testament. That’s harder to spell than “Shefali”.
It’s just a name that says something special that He sees in you. Something special that you mean to Him. One of the weirdly hardest but sweetest things you could ever do for yourself is to learn to see yourself in the special way He sees you.
Learning His name for you.
And when we’re all together in Heaven and He calls that name…
and you answer Him…
and your friends say, “What?! Why’d He call you that?!”
…just tell ‘em, “It’s the name He used to call me to wake up my heart in the morning…
It’s kinda my coffee name”