No Name

The Prophet from Away

Have you ever had trouble recalling someone’s name?  Name tags are a great help to me in that respect.  The face may look familiar, but the name escapes me.   I have found it especially true when I have moved to a new place.  Everything is different.  Routines are new, the geography is new, the weather is new, the people are new.  Being in a familiar place, where I am known and I know my way around is comfortable; it is easy to be there because I know what to expect.  Handling situations is nearly as easy as breathing. 

But when the place is new, all that certainty and confidence is gone. 

I was thinking about this as I was reading the book of Amos in the Bible.  Amos is about a man who was a shepherd and an arborist.  He worked outside with smelly animals keeping them safe and fed. Apparently, his second job was with sycamore-fig trees, keeping them healthy.  I imagine he looked like a farmer, with weatherworn skin and rough hands.   But then God called him to give His messages.  The twist came when Amos was not called to give God’s words to his own people, Judah, but to go to the Northern Kingdom, Israel, and give the message.  That country had separated from Judah and had made significant cultural and religious changes.  It was foreign to Amos to an extent. 

Not only was the Northern Kingdom foreign, but Amos was an unknown person to them.  He was a shepherd, which was not an exalted profession.  He was low class, uneducated most likely and a country bumpkin.  BUT God had called him to speak out to Israel, so Amos went. 

He was not welcomed, and in fact his preaching so annoyed the powerful in Israel that the king was told about him. The  people in power thought Amos was conspiring against the king and seeking his downfall.  Imagine thinking that a lowly shepherd would overthrow a king. But any threat had to be dealt with properly.  Prophecy and prophets are like that; God letting a person know what is going to happen and the prophet being rejected for telling the truth.  Amos was told to be silent and to go home. 

Unwelcome in a strange place and culture, an unknown with no social standing, prophesying to the king and high religious figures.  They could afford to ignore Amos, after all, who listens to smelly shepherds?  Certainly, Israel had prophets of their own, educated, cultured men who could speak the wisdom of God.  This no name prophet was unimportant.  The people of Israel did not even need to give him a hearing.

Yet his name was not unknown to the God of the universe.  In chapter 7 of Amos, God addresses him by name.  He speaks to Amos in a conversation because Amos is concerned for the people of Israel, and he asks God for mercy on them.  The no name prophet intercedes for the people that would discard him and his words.  The treatment Amos received at the hands of Israel did not stop him for seeking mercy for them.  They treated him as of no importance, but God knows his name and that was enough for Amos.

God knows your name as well.  He knows the days He has allotted you, the amount of hair on your head, your entire history.  This is how we exist and go on.  If God knows my name, may it be enough.