Listen to Devotion

“As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,” declares the LORD, “so will your name and descendants endure.”

Here’s a pop quiz. Can you rattle off the names of your great-great-grandparents? Can you describe their appearance? What did they do for fun? What made them laugh? How did they meet and fall in love? How did they handle days of stress? What were their hopes for the future? What were their darkest moments? What were their happiest memories? Unless you have a deep passion for genealogy, chances are that you might have trouble just coming up with their names. And unless you have some treasure trove of letters and journals where they poured out their hearts about everything, chances are that you know precious little about them.

And yet only three generations stand between you and your great-great-grandparents. Three. It’s a sobering thing, isn’t it. Their lives were just as vivid and real and three-dimensional as yours. But it took only a short passage of time for even their names to fade. And you and I are not exempt. In a few short generations, your descendants and mine will struggle to recall our names.

But that’s okay. It really is. Here’s why. About 2,700 years ago, the Lord himself gave you and me a timeless promise through the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. He said this. “As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,” declares the LORD, “so will your name…endure.”

Let that sink in for a moment. God has promised that your name and mine will endure as long as the new heavens and the new earth of eternal life will endure. In other words, the Lord will never forget your name. Never.

There’s a reason he will not forget. He has gone to great trouble to see to it that your name will never fade away. He became one of us. He walked among us in the person of Jesus Christ. On our behalf, he never forgot the will of his heavenly Father. With his blood, he cleansed the record of all our sins. And now he lives to remember your name. He will cherish you through and through, forever.

Lord Jesus, you will never forget my name. Thank you. Amen.

Daily Devotions is brought to you by WELS.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. ™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.