It was written all over the sides of the park’s tube slide in permanent black marker — the kind of vile commentary you might find on the walls of a truck-stop bathroom.

At first sight of it, I felt a surge of anger. Just lovely, I thought. Truly, nothing is sacred. Not even our neighborhood park. I mean, really, what could possess someone to write obscene graffiti in a place where children come to play?

But then, while considering what I might have done had I caught the perpetrator in the act, I saw something. In the middle of it all, written in the same scrawl, were these words: “Jesus is the answer.”

It stopped me in my tracks, and I marveled at it. I still do, even though park workers have long since come and cleaned off the graffiti. The writer could have intended it ironically, I guess. But I didn’t get that impression. No, even to this otherwise lost and depraved mind, somehow that name still meant something.

And that is a hopeful reminder. No matter how dark the times, or unlikely the source or setting, The Name Above All Names still resonates.

I don’t know of any other name with that kind of power.