Up in lights…

I’ve received a couple of emails, a couple of phone calls, and a personal conversation about it. Seems there’s a sign on 183, one of those programmable electric signs where the message changes every few seconds. Apparently this one frequently says, “Call Mike Robertson.” A few people have asked if that’s me, or if I’ve got a little business on the side.
Nope.
I just have one of those names which is very common. There are at least six Mike Robertsons in Austin alone. I did some online hunting and found about 80 in Texas, so there must be hundreds of us in the US. Maybe we should have a convention; nametags would not be necessary. Wikipedia says that Michael has been the first or second most popular name for boys in the US since 1954...which is when I got the name myself.
Not only is my first name ubiquitous, the 2000 US census located 150,299 people named Robertson. It’s the 159th most common surname in the country.
So being “Mike Robertson” is not all that special. We’re everywhere. Who could keep track of us all?
Well, my family has never confused me with the pro baseball player named Mike Robertson, or with the Mike Robertson who founded MP3.COM and other ventures.
And God has never mistaken me for anyone else. He apparently saw a sign one day that said, “Call Mike Robertson,” and He did just that; He called me to do something special with my life. This is part of it, writing these things each week. Teaching two wonderful classes each week is part of it, too, part of that “calling.”
But the coolest part is this: no matter if your name is John Smith or Stanford Alphin (the 1002nd most popular first name and the 18,836th most popular last name), God is calling you, too. You may share your name with a lot of other people. But God’s purpose for you is yours alone. He’s calling.
Aren’t you gonna answer that?