Dear Faith Family,
Do you have an idea, image, or phrase from Scripture that you find yourself circling back to more for its obscurity than its clarity? You know, a saying or story that sticks out because it's brief and a bit odd, though you are sure there is more to it than meets the eye? And, every once a while, something you are reading, watching, or thinking about reminds you of that little enigma, and you find yourself pondering it again--even if only for a moment or two?
Well, I found myself pondering once more Jesus' promise to give those who hold fast to faith in Him, the enigmatic "white stone, with a new name," from Revelation 2:17 the other day. The curious nature of this pocket-sized gift is that "no one knows [the name on the stone] except the one who receives it." How mysterious & kind-of-exciting, don't you think?!
Now, we've been learning the last few months through Galatians that we find ourselves under a steady barrage of marketed spiritual insights trying to get us to buy security, competency, and control in our life with God. Many of these insights seem plausible, some sincere, but all are relatively common due to their human-crafting. But here, in "the white stone, with a new name," Jesus offers us something truly unique, something we cannot buy nor which anyone could possibly say they know for us, a personal gift unwrapped through enduring faith.
So what is this gift? Not specifically, of course, but descriptively? What is this unique, God-inscribed rock?
Well, I think George MacDonald describes the gift for those who hold fast to the name of Jesus amid the persistent opportunities to buy something else, best. And he does so in a manner that encourages you and me to persevere in our freedom so that we might unwrap and display what God has given!
"The giving of the white stone with a new name is the communication of what God thinks about the man to the man. It is the divine judgment, the solemn holy doom of the righteous person, the 'Come, thou blessed,' spoken to the individual...
The true name is one which expresses the character, the nature, the meaning of the person who bears it. It is the woman's own symbol--her soul's picture in a word--the sign which belongs to her and to no one else. Who can give a man this, his own name? God alone. For no one but God sees what the man is, what the woman is...
God's name for a man must be the expression of God's own idea of the man, the being God had in His thought when he began to make the child, and whom God kept in His thought through the long process of creation that went to realize the idea. To tell the name is to seal the success--to say 'In thee also I am well pleased.'
...each woman has her individual relation to God, but each woman [also] has here peculiar relation to God. She is to God a peculiar being, made after her own fashion, and that of no one else. Hence she can worship God as no woman else can worship Him.
For each, God has a different response. With every man Jesus has a secret--the secret of a new name. In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter.
There is a chamber also (O God, humble and accept my speech)--a chamber in God Himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the peculiar man or woman--out of which chamber that person has to bring revelation and strength for his or her brothers and sisters. This is that for which they were made--to reveal the secret things fo the Father."
Praying this little enigma makes its way into your mind, heart, and life of faith this week--and circles back often! Love you. God bless.