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Somebody Knows My Name

In the sunrise of a fall dawn, I stopped my running before crossing the street.  Across a narrow side street from me, a woman crossing guard held back a dozen elementary school children.  With her arms spread, she gave a firm nudge backward to a little girl pushing to get past.  The girl frowned.  Then the guard’s whistle stopped traffic.  She walked into the intersection, coaxed the kids to cross, while she held her arms up against the cars.

As the corrected little girl passed, her head down in a pout, the guard used one arm to tap her head while saying brightly, “Hey, tootie-ka-pootie; have a good day!”  The girl tilted her head up into the sun, smiling and almost skipping.  It would be a good day.  That dawn drama keeps poking up in my memory.  Here’s a substitute caretaker correcting and cajoling God’s child for her good.  It’s what we wish for our children: a sensitive substitute parent who helps them walk the right way.

By the end of the school year, I’ll guess the crossing guard will know the girl’s name.  The affectionate tease would have to do in the meantime.  We parents like it when adults in our Christian community (church, school, family) pay attention to our children.  The children may itch under it, even fleeing it in adolescence, but we want it for them.  We want them to be in the “in” crowd: family, church family, school family, and in Christ himself.

In this general culture, things can get lonely for them.  Some of our children’s teachers (certain song lyrics, some ads, electronic images) scorn parents, denigrate their Christian heritage, and seduce them into the ghetto of peers, cut off from grandparents and their younger siblings at the same time.  John Short, a fine thinker in the UK, says that we “are deliberately making ourselves orphans.”   He says children are attempting to “originate themselves”; their selves have been cut from their extended families to grow up like tender plants through sidewalk cracks.

Thank God for your Christian school…and church…and home.

In the school you have teachers who ought to know your child’s name.  And they ought to know a bit of history of every Tricia or Trevor, their roots, their place in all the communities we wish for our children.  An old, simple proverb says, “Sometimes you want to go where everyone knows your name and they’re glad you came.”  Ann Holt, another British Christian, says that good teachers are always gently asking, “Who are you?” rather than taunting, “Who are you?”  God’s teachers (first parents and then our helpers in school and church and family) want to know who their children are.

Our children are not orphans.  If we are faithful in our calling as parents, we will counter the world’s messages.  

The Bible’s whole witness, from the Garden to the New Jerusalem, is this paradox: God is unfathomably great; God is a tender, loving parent who knows each of his children by name.  We all are adopted sons and daughters of the living God.  Still, God is mighty and holy.  For example, God says, “I am God, and there is no other” and “I have carried you since your birth.  Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I will sustain you” (Isaiah 46:3-4, 9).

Perhaps the Bible’s main comparison of God’s love for his people is a shepherd for his sheep.  Psalm 23 describes this care concretely: food and bed provider, guide, corrector, scratch fixer, and haven.  Jesus picks up the picture in John 10 with even more tenderness.  He says, “I am the gate for the sheep; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture.”  This shepherd “calls his own sheep by name.”  He goes out “ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.”  Jesus says, “I know my sheep and my sheep know me.”  He says, “I lay down my life for the sheep.”

The adults in a Christian community ought to be in sync to incorporate each one of God’s children into his family, a family as old as Adam and as diverse as Arab and Asian.  We parents ought to expect our Christian school teachers to be allies in knowing each child’s name, gifts, and history.  We can expect Christian schools to be places where “everyone knows your name and they’re glad you came.”  We need to work together so no child gets lost and each is shepherded.

Today shepherding is as distant as the moon.  That crossing guard in the early morning may be a modern version.  She prevented the small kids from playing in traffic.  She “comforted” the little girl with the “staff” of her arms.  She “prepared a way” for the kids as she held back the impatient cars.  She “anointed” the little girl’s head with a tap and a tootie-ka-pootie.  She was at her post early and stayed, I’ll bet, until the last little lad had safely arrived on the other side.

In good Christian homes and schools, Jesus knows his children’s names. So do his servants: moms, dads, and teachers.  We are all crossing guards in the kingdom, as welcoming as the Master was: “Whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me” (Matt. 18:5).