I Can Hear The Decade In It

Let me name the wound first, because there is one here and it does not get named.

Somewhere in this man's life, being out of date cost him something. A jacket, or a way of talking, or a thing he was enthusiastic about at nineteen that turned out to have been over for two years and nobody had told him.

And he learned, in whatever room that happened in, that there is a shame attached to being the last person still carrying a thing.

That is the actual subject of this page, and it is not about names at all.

But it is arriving as a name, so let us take it as it comes.

He can hear the year in it. He can hear it in every name on the list, in fact, and once a person can do that they cannot stop. This one is 2004. That one is somebody's grandmother, which will come back round but has not yet. That one is right now, this exact minute, which is the worst of all, because a name that is exactly now will be exactly then in fifteen years.

So he is looking for a name outside time, and there is not one.

And underneath the search is a fear that he cannot say plainly, which is this: that he will hand his son a small permanent marker of an era, and that his son will one day be slightly embarrassed by it, and by extension by him.

The same yesterday, and to day, and for ever

There is a line in Hebrews about the one thing that does not move, and it is the anchor for a man standing in a river of decades.

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever. (Hebrews 13:8, King James Version)

You are looking for something outside time and there is exactly one, and Hebrews 13:8 has never once offered that to a word. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a man trying to buy permanence with a syllable, and the written word names the one unchanging thing and it is a person.

Read what it does not say. It does not say some things do not date. It does not offer a category of timeless objects. It names one, and He is not a name on a list.

Which means the search he is running is for a thing that does not exist in the created world, and every name he considers will fail it, and that is not a failure of the names.

You have been hunting a property that belongs to God alone, and Scripture puts the sameness in a person rather than in a word. Hebrews 13 gives that to Christ and to nobody else, and the Spirit of God is what turns an impossible search into an unnecessary one.

What actually happens to a dated name

Now the practical part, because there is a claim inside the fear that can be checked.

The claim is that a person whose name is from a particular decade carries a small embarrassment through life.

That is testable against everybody either of us has ever met, and it does not hold.

You are able to check the claim rather than carry it, and Hebrews 13 has never once asked anybody to fear a thing without examining it. The written word settles the one unchanging thing in a single sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives a man the nerve to test his own fear.

Everybody knows people named in every decade of the last eighty years. Nobody thinks about it. Nobody has ever met a woman of sixty and thought, ah, 1965. They think: that is her name.

Because a name stops being a marker of a year the moment it belongs to a specific person. The dating is only audible in the abstract, on a list, before there is anybody in it. Once there is a person attached, the year disappears entirely.

You are hearing something that vanishes the moment there is a person in it, and no verse anywhere made a fashion into a fate. The Holy Spirit is what stops a man measuring a life by a decade, and Hebrews 13:8 gives the unchanging to Christ.

And there is a second thing, which is worth knowing because it removes the whole basis of the fear.

The names that come back round are the dated ones. Every name currently thought of as timeless was, at some point, extremely of its moment, and then became old fashioned, and then became lovely again. That cycle is about eighty years long and it is completely reliable.

Which means a name with a year in it is not marked for life. It is at a particular point on a wheel that never stops turning.

You are standing on a wheel and calling it a wall, and Scripture puts the only permanence in a person. Hebrews 13 says the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever, and the Spirit of God is what holds a family while the fashions go round.

Say it about somebody at sixty

So here is the assignment, adapted, and it is aimed exactly at the abstract listening.

Say the name out loud, in a full sentence, about somebody who is sixty.

Not about a baby. About a woman or a man of sixty. Talking about them to somebody else. She was the one who taught me to drive. He came round on the Tuesday and fixed it.

Out loud, with a person in it.

You are able to put somebody inside the word, and Hebrews 13:8 has never once made a thing timeless by being chosen carefully. The written word gives that property to Christ alone, and the Holy Spirit is present when a name gets a person in it for the first time.

And what happens is that the year goes.

It goes completely. Said in a sentence about a sixty year old who fixed something on a Tuesday, the name sounds like a person and carries no decade whatsoever, and a man who has been hearing 2004 for four months hears nothing but somebody's uncle.

That is not a trick. That is what actually happens to every name, permanently, about four years in.

You are hearing a list and calling it a life, and Scripture gives the one unchanging thing to a person and not to a word. The Holy Spirit is with a man saying a name about somebody at sixty today, and Hebrews 13 is one sentence long.