I am driving the side road tonight, the lanes are dark and slushy.  The rain hits the windshield with a whack and a splash.  Big, heavy drops.   It is 2 degrees.  Not yet cold enough for snow.  I am thinking, while concentrating of course on the roads, and my thoughts are bent on the subject of naming.  Naming people, specifically.  Not naming, as typically we associate naming with our given names, but rather naming people by their characteristics.  The notion crossed my mind that by naming people by their personality strengths, one is able to appreciate that person in a whole, new light.  I started to think of the little people in my classroom and how I would name them.  One was named perseverance, another resilience.  Another was just named JOY, she is such a delight to my heart.  One more is identified as fervour and another as mystery.  The last two are called tenacity and hope.  So many ways to name a child.

It must have been such a pleasure to have been given the special job of naming.  I bet that’s how Adam felt, if I could be given some licence with interpreting the first human being’s thoughts.  He had the privilege of NAMING all those animals in God’s new creation.  Can one truly appreciate such an awesome responsibility?  I think of the names we have given our own children, each one carefully thought-over, almost fought over in the end, so cautiously they were chosen.  Yet, we still are naming them, identifying their unique personality traits.   Fragile, confidence, intelligence, spunk.  Courage, enthusiasm, gifted and passion.  The endless ways to name a child.

As I name, I view each one as specially designed.  I appreciate the one I am naming, not for what they do, but for who they are.  They are, in a world of people, one in a billion.  One in a bazillion.  For all the stars in the heavens and all the sands on all the seashores, not one shines the same nor is one granule like another. So it is with children, with all of us.   There has never been, and never will there be, another me or another you.

How spectacular.