At a naming ceremony in many Nigerian homes, the elders gather with honey, salt, kola nut, alligator pepper and sugar cane, sometimes with palm oil and water, and touch each one briefly to the baby’s lips while speaking a prayer over the child. May your life be as sweet as this honey. May you add flavour wherever you go, like this salt. May you endure bitterness without losing your character, like this pepper.
The name itself is often chosen to express a hope, sometimes almost a prophecy, about who the child will become. My own father, an evangelist, did this at the naming ceremonies of several of my siblings that I witnessed growing up. The ceremonies were done in God’s name, with those items used only as symbols for the prayers and hopes spoken over each child. Nobody present imagined they were inventing the child’s future on the spot. They were recognising and speaking aloud something they believed God already knew.
Known Before He Was Formed
God said something like this to Jeremiah, about a time before Jeremiah drew breath:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5, NKJV)
Notice the order: God knew him, then formed him. God’s knowledge of who Jeremiah would become did not wait for Jeremiah to grow into it.
What a Mango Seed Already Carries
Long before a mango tree exists, its seed already carries the instructions for root, trunk, leaf and fruit, folded up inside it. None of that is added later as the tree grows. The farmer who plants the seed does not create its future. He gives what is already there the conditions it needs to grow.
Called Before He Felt Ready
Jeremiah responded the way many of us respond to a calling that seems too big for us:
“Then said I: ‘Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth.’ But the LORD said to me: ‘Do not say, “I am a youth,” for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and whatever I command you, you shall speak.'” (Jeremiah 1:6-7, NKJV)
God did not argue that Jeremiah was in fact mature, eloquent or fearless. He pointed back to what had been settled before Jeremiah was born. The calling did not depend on how confident Jeremiah felt.
Chosen While Still in the Field
When Samuel went to Jesse’s house to anoint a king, he assumed the tall eldest son, Eliab, was God’s choice. God told him, “For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7, NKJV). David, the youngest, was out with the sheep and had not even been sent for. Yet he was the one God had already chosen, before anyone in the house, including his own father, thought to consider him.
A Name That Waited for Its Meaning
Picture a woman whose parents, at her naming ceremony, insisted on a name meaning roughly “God has answered”, over the objections of relatives who preferred something more fashionable. They gave no long explanation; they had decided on the name before she was born, and it felt right. Decades later she goes through a long season of infertility, with years of prayer that seem unanswered, before becoming a mother in her late forties. Afterwards she often wonders whether her parents, without knowing any of it, had spoken a truth over her life long before anyone understood what it meant.
Jeremiah did not have to convince God he was qualified for a calling settled before his birth, and neither do you. If there is something God has placed in you that you have held back because you do not feel ready, bring it to Him in prayer this week and ask Him to show you the first step. And look for someone whose gifts you can name and encourage, as those elders did for a child too young to understand.
