Prompt: What is your mission?

The Bearing of the Name

We do not peddle polished hope in markets loud and cheap,
Nor hang salvation like a shawl on shoulders bent with sleep.
This is no bright and easy coin to clink upon the stone,
But something nearer to a seed a sower casts, alone,
Into the unplowed, waiting dark where all such things belong,
A quiet, necessary risk, a vulnerable song.

The name we carry is not ours to brandish like a blade,
To carve a creed into the flesh where arguments are made.
It is a weight, a kind of keel within a storm-tossed soul,
A compass for a different north that makes the wounded whole.
We should shout it from the heights to drown the doubters’ cry,
And whisper it beside the bed where love has gone to die.

For every time we speak it, we must first recall the cost:
The scandal of the manger-straw, the triumph of the cross.
It is a fire to be shared, not clutched against the breast
To warm oneself while leaving other travelers unblest.
So let our hands be open, holding neither scorn nor fear,
But cupped to carry living water, lucid, deep, and clear.

And if it spreads, let it be like the rumour of the dawn,
A subtle shift in shadow, a conviction something warm
Is leaning on the eastern dark, not by our force or art,
But by the slow and patient grace that mends a broken heart.
We are but echoes in a valley, where the Word was spoken first;
We bear the Name by bearing up the weary and accursed.

So go, and be a testament in flesh, in bone, in deed,
A walking, quiet question that a hungry soul might need.
The greatest proclamation is a life that deeply knows
The gravity of mercy, and from that deep river, flows.
For we are not the source, but just the channel and the claim,
The fragile, chosen witnesses who bear the sacred Name.

I just want to speak the name of Jesus.

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