A Name for the Unnamable

God has a lot names.

You and I probably own a couple. My name is Shira Jadasha Rodriguez, which means “new song”.

God’s names are actually a mix of the way we think of nicknames and names. They tell what his

character is, but also what He’s done. They’re not just abstract names. Every time He reveals himself in the Bible He proves his name by doing something before or after telling us His name.

He introduces himself as Elohim, the Strong Creator, as we watch him sing creation into being a day at a time, like a master craftsman. We watch him carve out a bed for the sea with language, form balls of fire affixed, suspended in the fabric of time by his words, mold animals from the earth, like a potter at his wheel, and create a cast of himself into which he breathed life and man awoke

We meet Adonai, Master or Lord, with Abraham, a wealthy man who was a master and a lord himself, but found prosperity in following a new master. He allowed El Shaddai, God Almighty, to direct his steps even if it meant laying up his son on the altar, because he knew that this Lord was Lord of all creation, space and time, and could break the laws of science to bring his son back from the dead at His command.

Next, we meet one of my favorite names for God, El Roi, the God who sees with Hagar, running away from her mistress after conceiving her master’s child, and being sent out for mocking Sarah. Now out in the wilderness, God himself finds this pregnant slave woman, away from her people and lost in the desert and touches her soul with attention and guidance. Hagar calls the name of the Lord, The God who sees, the God who sought a slave woman in the desert, not because of anything she could have done, but because it was his own love that flowed out of His radiant soul.

We meet the powerful Yahweh, I AM, with Moses at the burning bush that would not consume itself, even as the bush glowed with fire and never burned for the intensity of life in it. He then proved himself as He stretched out his hand and snatched His people from the evil Pharaoh of Egypt, a Superpower of the time yet one who was no match for the King of the Universe.

He proved to His People that He was all they needed, for when they cried out to him, He supplied. When they begged for safety from the Egyptians, He opened a sea and made them walk through it, as the fishes swam within its walls and they walked through for a day. When they needed guidance, He became a pillar of Smoke, a a cool shadow for his people in the heat, and a pillar of fire, keeping them warm by His glow in the windy desert night. When they asked for food, he gave them heaven-sent manna, and when they thirsted he made sweet water come out of a barren rock.

We meet the Good Shepherd with David, who teaches David how to be King and comforts his soul when he passed through the valley of the shadow of death. He proved Himself the king who holds His people when everyone else seems to fall apart, and who satisfies the thirsty soul with himself.

We meet the Jealous God with Hosea, who married a harlot and though his wife continued to leave him, he continued to seek after her each and every time because his love for her was so strong. This Jealous God wrote a story through the prophet’s life to illuminate, like a play, His passionate love for His people. How time and time again they might leave his embrace, yet he would continue to pursue them.

We meet the Savior God, Jesus, in Matthew, who saved people with the touch of his gentle hands from the grasps of disease and demons. We watch him save his disciples from the grip of a violent storm with the power of a sentence. We watch him give Himself up as into the hands of betrayers, to be wounded and scarred for innocence, a crown of thorns a reward for his claim of Godhead. We watch him bleed out, drip by drip as his lungs fill with water, and his torn flesh scrapes against the splintery wood of the cross and he utters his last words: “It is finished.” The same words a creditor would stamp on a debt paid.

For you.

For me.

We then meet the Living God, who defeats evil and crowns himself with the title of “Death-Slayer” as He emerges from his grave three days later and comes to Mary Magdalene. He needed only speak her name with a love all His own for her to know it who it was. His story continues to proclaim him the Living God as he sets the church afire and emboldens his people with words beyond them, inspiring, setting ablaze a world until it shines with life like the burning bush.

That is my God. Those are his names. If all of them could be “written one by one,” I would have to agree with John who wistfully said “I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

And so I feel about these very words of mine.

Which name of God do you need today?