Whenever I happen past the goats, horses, cows, or heifers, I usually greet them by name. “Hi, Cupcake,” I said to the first heifer I saw this morning. “Hi, Blossom and Clarabelle,” I said to the next.
A while later, I realized something: I don’t remember seeing the unnamed heifer in a long time! Yes, she’s there with the rest, but because she has no name, it’s almost as if she’s invisible. How very sad—no one, animal or person, should ever feel irrelevant, anonymous, or overlooked!
I had a long list of to-do’s for today—dishes, laundry, floors, harrowing the middle field, running to town to get groceries—but then and there, I resolved to name that heifer.
It’s not that we haven’t tried. It’s just that, because of her face is so fuzzy, the shape of the black marking on her face changes every day. Sometimes it looks like the silhouette of a kitty, other days, it looks like the Grinch or a king. Likewise, the white outline above that changes too. Depending on the hair day, it can look like an iris on a stem or Elmer’s glue running off her face.
Today, the white marking on her face looks like one of those sparklers that we kids played with on the Fourth of July. To make up for not naming her sooner, I’m giving her a special name, one that says she’s out-of-the-ordinary and stands out from the crowd: Sparkle.
“ I’ll say to Nobody, ‘You’re my dear Somebody,
And he’ll say, ‘You’re my God!’”
HOSEA 2:23
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