“You are still a promise, the heartbeat of God.
You may have forgotten, but He has not.
You are not your ashes, you are a flame.
Do not ask the shadows, the light of the world knows,
Knows your name” (Nicole Nordeman, Name).
I find it fascinating that out of all the people in all the parables that Jesus told during His earthly ministry, He only gives one of them a name — Lazarus.
Lazarus is probably the one we’d be most likely to pass by while looking the other way. He was a beggar dressed in rags with open sores that the dogs would lick. He was longing for even the crumbs that fell off the table of the unnamed rich man.
The rich man is probably someone we’d hold up as the example to follow with his acute sense of business and wise investment portfolios. He’d be the hero in most of our stories. Obviously, our idea of blessed is quite different than Jesus’.
Lazarus dies, probably from his illness, and goes to paradise. I believe it was for a simple faith that persevered in the midst of great suffering and want. I like to think that Lazarus never wavered in his faith in the goodness of God and believed wholeheartedly that God would set all things right.
The rich man was the first century equivalent of Forbes’ 50 richest people, one whose name everybody probably recognized. Yet it takes him dying and going to Hades before he shows concern for anyone else but himself (see the NIV Study Bible notes on Luke 16:28). His neglect of Lazarus who sat right outside his gates is telling of what kind of man he was. But God remembered Lazarus.
If God knew the name of Lazarus, He surely knows your name. You are indeed not forgotten. You are still heir to the promise God made to you long ago, even if you have forgotten it.
The Light of the World still knows your name.
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