Remembering names

I've always struggled with remembering people's names. It's frustrating and embarrassing to run into someone at church or in the street, and fail to drag their name out of my memory banks. Although I've had a few embarrassing moments, I've never done anything quite like this however.

British conductor Sir Thomas Beecham who started the world famous Prom concerts was famed for his sharp wit, but struggled, like many of us, with attaching names to faces as he grew older.

The story goes that he was shopping in Fortnum & Mason, and ran into a woman whose face was very familiar. He chatted with her for a minute, while desperately racking his brain to find her name. Noticing the wedding ring he tentatively asked:

"How is your husband?" hoping for clues.

"Oh, doing fine," she said. No help there.

Hoping for more information to stimulate his recall, he asked: "What is he doing now?"

"He's still King," she replied.

So it's weird to read in Psalm 119 v 55: "I remember your name in the night, O LORD, and keep your law." Has he forgotten God's name? Why does that lead to his keeping God's law?

Until, that is, you realise that the words "remember" and "Name" have a very different significance in the Bible. A name is not just a convenient label for someone - it represents their whole character and being. And remembering is not so much realising something that you have forgotten, but putting into practice something that you have known all along.

It's why when we talk about calling on the Name of the Lord, we are not describing a prayer that endlessly repeats "Jesus" over and over again - that is what the Lord himself might have described as "vain repetition" (see Matthew 6 v 7; 7 v 2). Calling on God's name is crying out to God to act on the basis of what we know about his character and purposes, and also to defend his honour in the world (name also equals reputation).

And we read, for example, at the start of Exodus that God "remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" (2 v 24). It's not that God forgot - it's just that in his sovereign wisdom, he chose this moment to act upon it to decisively save his people.

So when the psalmist remembers God's name in the night, he is talking about reminding himself about God's greatness, his holiness, his loving care, his protection. The result of his "remembering" is that this reminder of who God is leads him into a right relationship of loving obedience.

As you grow older, you may well experience the same problem of forgetting names. But let's get into the habit of remembering the Lord's name - who He is revealed to be in Jesus, and what He has done for us in His death and resurrection - and live by faith in him.