The human family

When you have a new teacher at school there is one thing about you which he or she will not know, but very soon has to find out and remember.  And that is your name.  Each of us has a name.  If we did not, everything would be one big muddle.  If we wrote a letter we could not sign it, and if we posted it we could not address it to anyone.  So a name is a word given to a person to distinguish him or her from other people.

But, of course, things as well as people have names.  For example, flowers and shrubs and trees all have names but there is one name that covers them all.  Plants.  They all belong to the great plant family.  But there are other families as well.  Thus blackbirds and thrushes and starlings belong to the bird family.  Horses and dogs belong to the animal family.  But to what family do we belong?  To God’s great human family, and as soon as we are born we have a name in that human family – our surname or parent’s name, for example, Smith or Brown or Robinson.