What?s in a nickname?

I wonder if anyone reading this column has a nickname?

I?m sure you?ve heard the anecdote that if Mary, Susan, Claire and Barbara go out for lunch, they will call each other Mary, Susan, Claire and Barbara. However, if John, Brad, Tony and Daniel go out, they will affectionately refer to each other as Bruno, Scrappy, Peanut-Head and Godzilla.

Twenty some years ago, I was pastor of a small church in northwest Iowa. It seemed that everyone in the town had a nickname. I did not realize how profound it was until a friend relayed that his wife had asked him where he had been one morning. He replied, ?I went to ?Giggles? funeral.?

His wife, unaccustomed to who ?Giggles? might be, asked him, ?who?s ?Giggles??? Without even thinking he said, ?Why that?s ?Moses? and ?Hoof-heads? dad!? She understood less that when she first asked.

In I Peter chapter one, we find the Apostle Peter giving nicknames to the scattered Christians. He first refers to them as ?elect exiles? in verse one. He is letting them know that their relationship to Jesus Christ is not dependent upon their geographic location.

Peter also refers to these Christians as ?born again? in verses three and 23, a reference back to what Jesus told Nicodemus he needed to do to get into heaven.

While these first two nicknames, Peter uses gives us their position in the Lord, in verses 14 and 15 he uses nicknames that refer to their character as Christians. In verse 14 he calls them ?obedient children? and in verse 15 he refers to them as ?holy.?

These first century Christians can serve as a great example to us.

If Peter the apostle were to write to our church today, what do you think he would call us? What nicknames would he use to describe us?

I pray that we will be like these early Christians who were known by both their relationship with Jesus (elect, born-again) and also to our character (obedient, holy).

I thinks that those nicknames would be much better than Bruno, Scrappy, Peanut-Head or Godzilla.