“Save me, O God, by the power of your name!”

I worship your name, Lord, which my lips dare not pronounce. Your name is your power, your essence, your person. Your name is you. I rejoice at the thought that you have a name, you can be called, can be addressed, can enter into dialogue with man and woman, can be dealt with as a person in confidence and familiarity. And I revere the silence of your anonymity in hiding your name from mortal knowledge and veiling your privacy with the mystery of your transcendence. Your name is above all names because your being is above all beings, the ground of all and the centre of all.

Your name is written in the clouds and uttered in the sky among peals of thunder. It is etched in the profiles of mountain ranges against the snow and whispered in the murmurs of the water in the ocean. Your name resounds in the name of every man and woman on earth, and is blessed every time a child is baptised. All creation pronounces your name because all creation comes from you and goes back to you.

In the power of that name I trust. Whatever I am is also an echo of that sacred name. Don’t permit that echo to die in barren silence.