When selecting a name for a child, a good and wise suggestion is to subject the name to the back porch yell test.

To conduct the test, step out on the stoop -- front or back, it hardly matters -- fill your lungs with air, and let fly. First, middle and last name. Give it a good listen. Check it for cadence and consonants, vowels and syllables. How does it sound? A little grating? Did you have to force it? Or did it flow nice and easy? If it comes through easily, has a pleasant cadence and isn't too heavy on the hard consonants, you've got a winner. You want a winner. You'll be hollering that name countless times on summer evenings as the fireflies emerge and the shadows darken. And, out in the distance, finely tuned ears, filled with the sounds of "mother may I?" or "olly olly outs in free" will still be able to hear your cry and his heart will turn toward the sound, his hunger toward the dinner, his grime toward the tub.

Come home, that sound says. Come home.

Home, to safety. Home, to sustenance. Home to sweet, clean sheets surrounding squeaky clean sun-drenched skin.

Come Saturday's dawn, my favorite month of the year is born again. September blue skies. September scented air. Leaves turning before the fall, cool mornings and cool evenings, all this and more contribute to my love of September. Once I became a mother, however, September appealed to me in an entirely new way. All three of my children loved the outdoors. From the first day of summer vacation until the first day of school, they were out-of-doors. Riding bicycles. Swimming. Running up and down the chalk hills. Searching for treasures (sometimes finding one) all day long. One day their treasure was a huge snapping turtle, filling their red wagon from front to back and from side to side. Crawdads, toads and even snakes became the "pet dujour." Seizing every moment of sunshine they could get each day, soon their skin was bronzed, never burned. In September, all that changed. School was back in session. Homework called each night. Spelling lists needed review, math problems needed to be completed. Books waited to be read. And bedtime was strictly enforced. Therefore, in September I could, without compunction, step out on the stoop and, taking a deep breath, call out their names much earlier than I dared to in say late June or July.

And here they would come, my little chicks, once again safely under my wings --homework, bath time, supper and bedtime the routines that rocked them safely to sleep each night. That deep breath I took to call them home? It always ended with a sigh of relief as they came in, one by one. And it all began in September.

Small wonder then that I so easily identify with Jesus on the hillside outside of Jerusalem, weeping. He had called Israel's name, time after time, day after day, longing to bring them home, to the shelter of his wings, but they would not.

But wait. Listen. He's still calling. As the sun sets, as the shadows deepen he's still calling. Is that your name he's calling? Can you hear him above the din of every day life, above the theme music for the nightly news, above the ringing of the telephone or the blaring radio?

Will L. Thompson put the thought to word and music in 1880 with his hymn "Softly and Tenderly" the chorus of which is "Come home. Come home. You who are weary, come home. Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling. Calling, O sinner come home."

"The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it." I Thessalonians 5:24 (NIV)

Things you won't see in heaven: Empty stoops