Have you ever been tempted to carve or write your name on a tree or a wall? Perhaps you have done it in the sand at the beach. Although the tide may very quickly erase a name written there, in other places the name may last for many years. Of course, it’s a bad idea to mark up a tree or someone else’s fence with your name. But there are other places where people’s names are written down on purpose and with a good reason. It is so they won’t be forgotten.
Perhaps you have walked through a cemetery and seen names on gravestones. The name of the person along with the dates of their birth and death are neatly carved on the gravestone. In this way we remember our loved ones who have died. Some gravestones give a hint of where that person’s spirit went when they died ... heaven or hell.
Another interesting place to see names is on rocks and cliffs along the Oregon Trail in North America. Many immigrants moving west in the 1800s wrote their names with axle grease or carved them on huge boulders as they passed along the trail. Fur trappers and explorers were the earliest names. Their names marked the way for the immigrants they were sure would come after them. Later, long “trains” of wagons, filled with families and everything they owned, traveled west along those same trails. Many of those travelers also carved their names in the limestone rocks.
One landmark from those pioneer days is called Independence Rock. More than 5000 immigrants wrote their names on this rock, in what is now the state of Wyoming. It came to be called the Great Register of the Desert. There is another “register rock” in the state of Idaho, where passing immigrants left their names. Many of them have been partially erased by the weather over the past 150 years, but some can still be read.
God knows the name of every person that has been born into this world, including your name! He knows when you were born, who your parents are, where you live, and even how many hairs you have on your head!
On a recent airplane trip, we had to show our boarding passes to be let onto the plane. What do you think would have happened if our names were not on the passenger list? We couldn’t have flown that day until we bought a ticket. That is like the Lamb’s book of life: The list of names in the book is checked, and those not written in the book cannot enter heaven. “Whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:1515And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. (Revelation 20:15)).
Get ready now! Tell God that you know you are a sinner and that you believe Jesus died on the cross to wash you from your sins. The Lord Jesus will write your name in His book, and it can never be erased.
Messages of God’s Love 10/1/2023