Will Remember Your Name

Maya Lin wanted to build a wall. Her wall was not practical but a monument. She created it as part of a college architecture class that challenged students to make an entry for the national design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Her professor only gave her a B-. The politicians didn’t care much for it. They claimed it was too simple and an affront to the soldiers. Yet it stands today as one of the most powerful memorials. It’s not just the wall, it’s what is on it. Names. 58,000 half-inch-high names of the dead in chronological order. Lin wanted people to know the names of those that never came back.

Nehemiah wanted to build a wall. It wasn’t a monument but a practical necessity. Not only to protect his hometown but to unify the people in it. The politicians didn’t care much for his efforts. They undermined and intimidated the effort. But Nehemiah didn’t stop till the work was done even after the wall was built. The book of the Bible that bears his name stands a memoir to the effort.

And in it is also a list of names.

In chapter three, Nehemiah gives us a list of the workers and just what they did. In chapter 10 he tells us all the men that signed the covenant. In chapter 11 he tells of the families that volunteered to live in the city. Throughout the book, you see the names of those that gave of themselves to ensure the future of Jerusalem. Nehemiah wanted us to know the names of those that were willing to work.

Too many great efforts are credited to the few at the top and not to the lowly that bared the burden. Let’s never forget in the work we do to remember those who put the hand to the plow and sacrifice themselves to do so.

But we request of you, brethren, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you, and have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction, and that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Live in peace with one another.

1^st Thessalonians 5:12

Comments

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...

Master Your Self

In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt. He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!) Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest. Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt! Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way. He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal. As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself. He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors. But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...

Until Midnight

In Acts 20, there is the tragicomic event surrounding a young man by the name of Eutychus. He did what a lot of folks before and after him did, he fell asleep during a sermon. Unfortunately, he was setting in in the third story window at the time. So instead of nodding off and hitting the pew in front of him, he fell to his death. The good news was the apostle Paul was delivering the sermon and had the ability to bring him back. I don’t know, however, if we can judge Eutychus too harshly. The sermon had gone on till midnight. Paul wouldn’t finish it up till daybreak. That’s a long lesson. I know some folks that might want to jump out of a window if I had a lesson that long, yet these Christians wanted to be there to hear Paul. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pushing for all night sermons but I think we might need to adopt these folks' dedication. They knew that Paul was only in town for a limited time only and they were determined to ...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog