A Jon Post

It’s been hard recently. The number of people coming in on legs or in wheel chairs and leaving under a blanket has been higher than usual. I have known some well, others I have met only once or twice, and there are even some few who I don’t have the privilege of knowing before I hear “Another one died last night”.

I have been pondering our ministry and our reasons for what we do over the last few days and our mission to speak and find the “Voices of the World”. I wrote down some thoughts tonight as I was thinking about those voices. There are very many.

Here in this dark place
Where death reigns and corrupted flesh fouls the air
Here in this dreary room
Where poison drips drips drips through plastic tubes and needles
Here in a lonely bed
A heart still beats slowly slowly slowly unrested since the day it was born

I have a name 

Faces and tears and hands are easy to imagine, easy to pity and easy to forget.
Broken bodies and stained bed sheets pull prayers like shoulders from their sockets
But names slip in and out of memory faster than the prayers stop 

I have a name

A person lies here. A person who grew up far from this bed. A person who learned to live and play and love and walk and dance and curse and work and sing and offer grace and hurt people and trust people and run away and stand and fight.
A person lies here still.
Though eyes loll back and lips mutter meaningless words and muscles spasm…
A person lies here still.

I have a name

Born so many years ago and named by laughing and smiling parents.
From infant, to toddler, to child, to teenager, to adult… this name has marked for good and ill.
Whispered by a lover in a secret meeting place
Derided in a mocking voice by the school bully
Yelled from across the busy street by a friend in the marketplace
Spoken sternly by a disciplining father
Whimpered in disbelief by a mother who has just found out the gravity of this sickness

I have a name

Now at the end of life and legacy that name means more than it ever has.
Though flesh falls away
Though family has stopped visiting
Though the pain replaces the family

I have a name

It is not forgotten.