Another Look by David Faust

Have you ever Googled your own name? I did so the other day and the website informed me, “There are 218 people with the name David Faust in the United States.” A quick scan of individuals on the list revealed that while we may wear the same name, our lives have taken different paths. One David Faust is a photographer who specializes in pictures of trucks. Another is a lawyer in New York City. There’s a dentist in Pennsylvania, a librarian in Minnesota, a physician in Wisconsin, a professor in South Carolina, an upholsterer in Tennessee, and a horse thief in Texas. (Okay, I made up the last one, but the rest of my namesakes are real people.)

I’ve never met those other David Fausts, but I hope all of them obey the law, avoid scandalous behavior, and maintain a strong credit rating. (In case they don’t, they may need help from that New York City lawyer.)

It will lead us to make better choices if we remember that others may read about our lives in the years to come. Consider the characters described in the Bible. Etched in the stone tablets of Scriptural history, their stories capture whole lifetimes in short summaries. For example, Ahab “reigned in Samaria over Israel twenty-two years” (1 Kings 16:29). But more striking than the chronological summaries are the moral summaries that say things like “he did evil in the eyes of the Lord,” or in Ahab’s case, he “did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him” (v. 30).

It’s far more encouraging to read how King Hezekiah “did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, just as his father David had done . . . . Hezekiah trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel. . . . He held fast to the LORD and did not cease to follow him; he kept the commands the LORD had given Moses. And the LORD was with him” (2 Kings 18:3-7).

Hezekiah was on the right path when he kept the Lord’s commands “just as his father David had done.” Wouldn’t it change the way we live if we decided to live “just as our Father has done”? Imagine the privileges and responsibilities that are ours. We wear the family name of the heavenly Father himself! The apostle Paul declared, “I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name” (Ephesians 3:14, 15). He went on to say in Ephesians 5:1, “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children.” John wrote, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1).

Just as faithful sons or daughters never want to disgrace their parents, God’s children ought to wear his family name with humility and integrity, lest we dishonor the Father’s reputation by our actions. We must wear the family name honorably and gladly even in hard times, for Scripture says, “If you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name” (1 Peter 4:16).

It makes me smile to think that somewhere in eternity the heavenly Father looks down at his spiritual offspring and proudly exclaims, “Those are my kids.”

And it makes me smile to imagine that somewhere in Minnesota there’s a librarian Googling his own name and wondering, “Who is this guy named David Faust who writes a column for The Lookout?”