The Pearl of Great Price - A Poem on the Christian Adventure

Every May I find myself reflecting on my journey of missionary/ministry work, which started in May 2015. This poem captures some of the adventure and human emotions that follow especially from a call to ministry work, but also from the universal call to pursue the Christian life in general, leaving one's old life behind. 

The Pearl of Great Price

by Emma Savageau

There’s a Pearl of Great Price

Such they leave it all to find.

Both kith and kin, and hearth and home

They will to leave behind.

No ocean is too vast

Nor open plain too wide

To daunt the fearless traveler

Who holds that hope inside.

For the Pearl of Great Price

Is their lifetime’s highest aim.

No limits to their sacrifice

For the Pearl is worth the pain.

A heart alight, exulting joy;

Their passion for the chase

Leads on to share the greatest Prize

With the whole human race.

And some may even find the Pearl.

Or does It come to them?

Yet few there are who know the way

To bring It home again.

See, questing for the Pearl

A’times itself becomes the prize

And travelers let slip their grasp

On the Thing they strove to find.

In placing quest before the Pearl,

They lose the joy of both.

And that hopeful willing fire

Loses heat and loses hope.

The Pearl’s still the greatest prize,

Still their lifetime’s highest aim.

But once their quest has taken pause

How do they start again?

It’s then, upon a distant soil

The traveler recalls

The kith and kin, and hearth and home

Left for a higher Call.

And if they did receive the Gift

Of that most blessed Pearl,

This traveler is less alike

To their forsaken world.

The things they left behind

No longer slake their thirst.

But such a fate it seems to some

Is an unasked-for curse.

In hidden shame the traveler

Might even rue their choice

To leave a-questing for the Pearl,

But they’ll never give that voice.

They know the Pearl is the Prize.

They long to understand

When and why the fire cooled,

Why there’s scarce joy in What’s at hand.

They know of those whose quest

Achieved the Pearl of Great Price,

And succeeded after in the task

Of keeping It in sight.

These sainted champions recline

In peace when quest is done.

They tend the fire in the hearth

And prize the Pearl won.

Perhaps that’s where the secret lies:

That they prepared a place

Where they could full receive the Pearl,

Prize of the human race.

It was not in questing or achieving

That their fulfillment came.

But in the captivating beauty

Of the Pearl, despite the pain.

For when the pain is for the quest

The cost becomes too grim

The sacrifices are too steep

And joy and hope grow dim.

But when the quest is ordered right

As only answer to the Call,

As but the means of saying “yes”

There’s much less far to fall

For the traveler does not rely

On the quest to compensate

For the sacrifices made

And the bread of tears they ate.

Instead, the Pearl is the prize.

The quest is but the way

To find which place the Pearl is found

And there in peace to stay.

The Pearl does not answer

To the whims of questing men.

It’s not uprooted, not removed

To a place that pleases them.

Those travelers who did (or seemed)

To gain the victory

Still left their kith and kin, but found

The Pearl made them free.

The Pearl is the greatest prize,

In It is found our hope.

Either questing or in contemplation

It is the end of both.

Press on then, weary traveler.

Do not resent your quest,

For the Pearl costs a mighty price

But it’s worth all the rest.