Secret Identity

While eating lunch today I read a post on Patrick Mead’s blog, where he wrote about an ancient family name, kept secret, apparently for a LONG time. Hence the ‘ancient’ in ‘ancient family name’, right?

Honestly, this sent my imagination on a little trip. What would cause a family to keep their real name secret? Particularly over such an extended period of time? (One of these days I will write a novel; thoughts like this make my head percolate with ideas.)

But this also reminded me of a part of Eldgridge’s book, Wild at Heart, where Eldridge encourages readers to ask God to tell us our name. To tell us what He thinks of us. This idea that God has a name for us, a name that identifies who we really are.

Now, I’m known as Brian, Daddy, and once in a while ‘Mr. McKean’ (although at 33, I’m still young enough to look over my shoulder for my pop if you call me that). A few people might even call me Max.

Can I take a moment and tell that story? I went to a rather large high school – about 2000 juniors and seniors – and on picture day, a friend of mine signed me in. For fun he wrote my name as Max McKean. When those pictures came, my mom wasn’t thrilled with how they turned out, so she told me to sign up for retakes – and when those were taken, I signed in as Brian.

When the yearbook came out, both my pictures made it in – one identified as Brian McKean, and the other as Max McKean, with different shirts, slightly different expressions on my face. If you’re wondering, yes, I had hair in both pictures. And for a while, a few friends called me Max, just for fun. Epilogue: Shortly thereafter, at my high school job, the manager called me into his office and asked pointedly if I had a twin brother. Someone had brought him a copy of the yearbook, and shown him the pictures -- and he thought that perhaps I’d kept my 'twin' a secret because ‘we’ were both working under my name in order to split the work hours at this one job!

But I digress. The only point I was intending to make in the mess above is the need we all have to get a grip on our identity. Who am I? And whether you have an ancient name, as Mr. Mead does (and that is wicked cool, btw), or whether you have a new name pending from God, as Eldridge asserts, you absolutely have an identity in Christ, a persona whom He intends for you to become.

Some of that becoming won’t happen until we reach God’s side – the new body we’ll receive, the identity we’ll have there is hard to see (i.e. through a glass darkly). But part of that becoming is supposed to be happening right now. If we’ll just engage with God. Today.