Has anybody ever called you a name? In Isaiah 62 God calls His people a couple of names: “A crown of beauty,” and “a royal diadem.” He must have thought a lot of them to call them by such beautiful names.

The name change was so meaningful to Isaiah that as he spoke about it he said, “I will not keep silent” (Is. 62:1). He knew God was up to something great in His people, and that their story needed to be told. It was a story of grace, a story of God entering into the narrative so profoundly that the future would be different than what the past seem to indicate it would be.

Can God really enter into our stories and so change them that we must be given new names in order to reflect the new storyline? God said that His people use to be called, “Forsaken” and “Desolate.” Not any more. Now they are called “a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,” “a royal diadem,” “My delight is in her.” He said they would be called by the name “oaks of righteousness.”

Grace is a wonderful reality. It sees beyond the immediate, beyond the “forsaken” and “desolate,” and declares that God is doing a new and different thing. God will so change the mind and spirit of His people that it is said of His, “The Lord delights in you,” and “Your God will rejoice over you” (Is. 62:5).

Aren’t these remarkable thoughts to think? God rejoicing over people? God delighting in people.? I can understand people rejoicing and delighting over God, but God rejoicing and delighting over people. Wow.

Could it be that changing names is an ongoing event with God? What is your old name? What might God call you if He were to change your name? “Your name was ____________ but now it is ________________.”

There is a way of living that accompanies one who has come to faith in God through Jesus Christ. Christians pray often the prayer Jesus taught, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). Why do we pray that prayer? We pray it because the ways and means of God are fundamentally in opposition to the ways and means of the world. Followers of Christ do life differently than does the world.

In the words of John the Baptist we “bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (Luke 3:8). That is to say, we live in a way that reflects the life of God in us. We are truthful. We live in a spirit of giving and sharing. We are honest, and live with integrity. We don’t push and shove our way through life; instead, we reach out to people and love them in the name of the One who loves us.

Thomas Chisholm says in well in a hymn, “O to be like Thee, blessed Redeemer, pure as Thou art!” When we “bear fruit in keeping with repentance,” we find ourselves hungry to be like the One who has redeemed us and made us whole.

Truth be known the world needs followers of Jesus to step up and live redeemed lives. Someone needs to speak truthfully and live authentically and do works of mercy and love. If not Christians, who? If not today, when? There is no better time than the present to let the life of Jesus fill us and energize us to be like Him in our world. Is it possible that through us Jesus loves and serves and touches and restores? Could we be a voice of hope and forgiveness in His name?

May God help us to bear fruit in keeping with repentance and the life we live in Jesus.

Here is a wonderful word to consider. It appears in Luke 3:2, “The word of God came to John…” Isn’t that just like God? The world was going about its business, caught up in its distracted ways, and, unbeknown to it, God shows up in some-body, catching everybody off guard.

John heard the word and began to preach about how people could turn away from the numbing and deadening ways of life outside of God and find a place of forgiveness, hope and new beginnings. God was afoot and something new was underway, something that would change the storyline in peoples’ lives and give them new hope and new beginnings, a future under the influence of God.

John called people to repentance. Sounds like a very theological thing but really it is a very simple thing. Repentance means to turn around. That’s all. The difficulty comes with a person deciding if they want God in their lives. Some say NO to God, and meander along through life, as if they have forever. Others say YES to God, and turn around into the loving arms of God who loves the world so much that He gave His only Son for it.

John came to prepare the way for Jesus. John wasn’t the message. Jesus was the message. John wasn’t the hope. Jesus was the hope. John breaks into metaphor as he explains what the presence of God in a human life will mean: Every ravine will be filled, and every mountain and hill will be brought low; the crooked will become straight, and the rough roads smooth (Luke 3:5). This is a poetic way of describing how grace changes how we look at life.

When God is present in a person’s life he or she sees differently than before. Not the scenery or the conditions but God sets the tone for life. God’s presence brings healing and hope and a sense of renewal and future.

In Advent we hear the invitation to turn around and come home -- home to God