Prior to January 1st, I started saturating myself with everything I could find about the oldest name of God, El Elyon.  Every night since, I’ve ended my day with this prayer, ‘Help me connect with You through Your name in a way that changes our relationship forever.’  

This morning, I woke up thinking about my grandmother.  My face was wet with tears as I remembered how she suffered a desperate need for connection and went to surprising lengths to find it.  

She (Gerda Johannson) emigrated from Sweden at age 16.  We never knew the reason. She went through immigration on Ellis Island but what happened when she set her feet on the streets of New York is unknown.  Eventually, she married a railroad man who was mean, at times violent, and mentally unstable with untreated schizophrenia.  He isolated my grandmother to a rural farm with no neighbors in sight.  She lived her days in fear of him as she bore and raised seven children. Many nights when he was ranting and irrational, she woke up her children and, together, they ran to the barn to spend the night in hiding.  

When she could not sit on her pain any longer, she admitted visiting a neighboring pasture to talk to the cows. As she unburdened her soul, dark brown eyes would look back at her and she felt they connected with her anguish.

After thinking about my grandmother’s story, it clicked.  The reason to study God’s names is not to know more about Him.  This isn’t an intellectual pursuit.  It’s a journey of the heart.  Each name is a new way to connect with Him.   For this, we were created.  Let’s begin.

El Elyon means ‘the most high God.’ He is higher and more powerful than any political figure in our headlines and stronger than any dark force that seeks to intimidate us. His authority trumps the leaders of every nation under the sun and extends to the heavens as well as the places in the deep. He is most High God over all spirit beings and human beings.  No one is His equal.  

NASA sent a spacecraft to Saturn to take pictures, hundreds of thousands of them. It took seven years for it to get there, and no one knew if the spacecraft could withstand the 1400+ degree temperatures in Saturn’s orbital path.  El Elyon created Saturn, it’s many moons, and everything beyond our solar system.  This most High God created us, too. He called us by name and then said, “You are mine.”    

My grandmother found God later in her life. The Lutheran faith of her childhood came full circle and she connected, finally, with Jesus. Her old Swedish Bible lay on the radiator near the kitchen table. Her eventual death was beautiful. My mother was with her as she exclaimed over the world she was seeing for the first time.

Today, we can rest in El Elyon.  He drew us to Him with cords of love.  We are connected, attached. Nothing can wrench us out of His hands.       

El Elyon, make Your name so personal that I am changed from this day on.  Amen