The Name That Changed Everything

George Washington Carver never knew his parents. Born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri, around 1864, he was stolen as an infant by Confederate raiders and left orphaned. Moses and Susan Carver could have simply raised the boy as a laborer on their farm. Instead, they gave him something far more precious — they gave him their name.

That single act of claiming reshaped everything. Young George was no longer a nameless orphan defined by the cruelties inflicted upon him. He was a Carver. He belonged to someone. Susan taught him to read, nurtured his fascination with plants, and told him he could become whatever God intended. Carver later said that knowing he was wanted — truly wanted — gave him the courage to walk ten miles to attend school, to press through rejection after rejection at universities, and eventually to become one of America's most brilliant agricultural scientists.

The apostle John marvels at a similar extravagance: "See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" This is not honorary language. It is not a polite title. God has claimed us, named us, made us His own. And like Carver, who could scarcely imagine where that belonging would lead, we too await a transformation beyond our imagining. We are already children. What we shall become has not yet been revealed — but it will be glorious.