Here's my scavenger hunt challenge: take a photo on your smartphone and send it to me from the outside coffee shop table I'm sitting at as I write. It's in the middle of a fancy shopping area in Scottsdale. It’s got stores I rarely go into, but a nice vibe anyway. (Just kidding about the scavenger hunt), but here’s the clue anyway: I'm looking at a string of stores across the street from me with the names: MIXT, purple, ALBION, PARACHUTE, PAIGE, and vineyard vines.

I sit here thinking about how things are named these days.  We don't name things for their function so much anymore.  We name things to catch attention, intrigue, begin a story in us that captures interest and draws us in.  I can't know what any of those stores actually sell unless I go closer, look inside, watch what the people inside are holding up or putting in their bags or eating (or by logging onto their website to do a little searching without walking).  

The point is the "feel" these names evoke.  I'm not supposed to think that PARACHUTE sells parachutes.  Nor am I to think that "purple" sells a color.  If they work, they evoke associations. "Parachute" evokes adventure, protection, and quality. "Purple" evokes depth, brightness, fun, intelligence, (or perhaps, for some, a bruise!).  The one store that seems more straightforward, "vineyard vines" might be the least successful of the names.  It turns out not to be a wine store as I thought it would be (despite the whale next to the name).  It's a clothing store.  Not sure what a vineyard has to do with a whale, or what do either of them have to do with clothing?  And I'm not particularly interested in finding out.  But maybe some of you are.  

The connection of all of this to faith is that many of the things we say about God, and about faith in God, function as the names of those stores—but in an eternally significant way.  Modern marketers actually learned a lot about how naming works from scripture.  For scripture is where words like "fear," and "mercy," and "Christ," and "God," and "love" are given to us not to limit, or label, or provoke a decision before they're explored.  They're given to us to intrigue, to evoke, to draw us in, to invite us to dive in and learn more—to look around, wonder, discover, infer, and ask the next questions.  We're not meant to decide on them before we dive into them.  We're meant to approach, and open, and enter.   How sad when the church makes them so banal that we don't get interested at all.  

When we say "God is love," or "Jesus is God," or "God has a plan for you" or "Jesus saves," or "Love your enemies," we're not meant to think that settles and explains it.  We're meant to ask the next questions:  How? Why? Where? When? And how do we enter?  Where do we fit?  How will this change us?  What's worth our sacrifice?

I want to feel drawn to the ideas that fill my faith.  I want to enter, explore, learn, and find myself there.   And I want that for you too.  

I'm waiting for the winning smartphone pic ;)  

PS - did you notice that the photo our communications guru selected for this blog has nothing to do with it? or does it? Giddy up!