Showing posts with label Masters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Masters. Show all posts

Monday, April 10, 2023

A Hope-Hug



Heb.11:6
And without faith it is impossible to please God,
because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists
and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Earlier this week a commentator for The Masters remarked how
there are far more games being played than the one we see on the greens;
the games of the mind!
We can all relate to that comment, can't we?!
But above all that fuels the duels of the mind
there is faith, hope and love. (1 Cor.13:13)
These are no game!
These equip us for what waits after life's/faith's grueling duels are done!
Images like the ones below can't help but rouse a sort of reflection
and stir a sacred anticipation for That Day
when by the grace of God for His eternal glory, believers, faithful and true
 celebrate the Victory of all Victories!
When it will be our arms lifted in unceasing praise to the One who made triumph possible!




Dear Christian, are you discouraged, weary beyond words, with love's cares and prayers?
Press on. A Heavenly hug awaits!



Hope heals many a hurt
Hope drives us from despair
Hope endorses the holy work
Of meek and patient prayer
And does not make ashamed
All who through faith, trust Him
Who once upon a cross proclaimed
Hope that no woe/foe can dim

Though oft we groan with grief
Where hell’s painted façade
Promotes the plague of unbelief
And fearlessness of God
Still, mercy is renewed
Each morn, His truth remains
Where faith keeps hopelessness subdued
Through grace His love sustains

Whoever will may come
Trust in God and repent
Before the certain, sacred sum
Of numbered days is spent
Before it is too late
To prepare to meet God
Because Last Breath has sealed the gate
With judgment’s solemn rod

Without His gift of grace
Without redemption’s stream
How can we bear to think to face
He who died to redeem
And break the curse of sin
To save the deathless soul
To anchor hope beneath the skin
Of faith that makes us whole

© Janet Martin

 In Need 



Guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my Savior,
and my hope is in you all day long.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! 
In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope
 through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

May your unfailing love be with us, Lord,
even as we put our hope in you.

But if we choose to reject and disregard Him,
what then?!!
If we choose through unrepentance, God's wrath?!!

A somber reflection from a devotion by Charles Spurgeon 





Monday, April 11, 2022

Road to Glory...


"God made me good at golf and
I want to glorify him with this gift"




“God is in control and the Lord is leading me, 
and if today is my time, then it’s my time, 
and if I shot 82 today, somehow I was going to use it for His glory."

a few favorite moments...(proud wife)

...and caddy


savoring the sweetness of the moment 
and the support of many fans and family


In the writer's digest poem-a-day challenge
Yesterday's Prompt was write a taste poem
This poem could be entitled 
The Power of Perseverance or
The Sweet Taste of Success

This poem could be about a private, personal challenge or
The fight to faith's finish-line!
So I settled on the title 
Road to Glory

Because the glorious sweetness of success's trophy always casts a shadow;
the bitter cup of dreams dashed (for now)
Cameron Smith acknowledges appreciative applause from fans
after a disappointing finish...

This poem was written with him in mind as well
as well as all of us who
have tasted, in varying degrees, 
the bitter draught of disappointment!


The pleasing flavours/favours of success
Somehow become more sweet
When hope’s hurdles to happiness
Have been honed by defeat

Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose
Life’s course of ups and downs
Refines endurance with its dues
Of crosses before crowns

The hard knocks of ‘not yet’ beget
If we do not give up
After the challenge has been met
The sweetest victor’s cup

Defeat is not the finished fight
But just a stepping-stone
To test the mettle of the might
Of more than skin and bone

Sometimes what at first glance may seem
Like failure and regret
Is but the beauty of a dream
Not quite accomplished yet

Then keep the faith; this is the rite
Before we realize
Where what once seemed a bitter fight
Was sweetening the Prize

© Janet Martin


Shout out to Corey Connors (a former local)
 from proud Canadian fans!

Eric Liddell, when being reprimanded by his sister 
for neglecting his responsibilities before God 
as he devoted his focus toward competitive running, responded,
 “I believe that God made me for a purpose. 
But He also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure .”

In whatever form it takes
May we all 'run' to feel God's pleasure!
So someday we may exclaim triumphantly

2 Tim.4:7-8
I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course, 
I have kept the faith:
 Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, 
which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day:
 and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.



Monday, April 12, 2021

Onus of Reply

 PAD Challenge day 12: 

For today's prompt, write a poem using at least three of the following six words:
convict, great, play, race, season, and voice.
Extra credit for using all six words.
Extra extra credit for writing a sestina.

Sometimes dreams wane...
sometimes they are fulfilled!
Japan celebrates with Hideki Matsuyama 
as he, the winner of the Masters 2021




I am a bit of a born day-dreamer but am beginning to realize
in my mid-fifties, how the play of dreams is no longer center-stage!
Too much reality to focus on!

Attempting a sestina😐
I realized after struggling through writing this 
the extra challenge was using the six key words as the last word in each line! 
oops. See if I get a chance to try again later!


Somewhere along the way the play of dreams begins to wane
The great weight of love’s tears seasons the years with sun and rain
The voice of choice convicts or forgives; we live its Reply
The success of life’s race we run is determined thereby
Where, not how we begin but how we finish is the test
This is the day the Lord has made and He deserves our Best

Life is too precious to give it anything but our best
Reality plays havoc with dreams, thus sometimes they wane
Who knows what life bestows to compose the lows of its test
Some seem to get more sunshine; some seem to live in the rain
Where so much more than meets the eye is presented thereby
The voice of choice always at the mercy of our reply

We ought to give most careful thought to effects of reply
Because much more than meets the eye works out for our best
Where strength of character, not physique, is fashioned thereby
Our voice is heard without a word in life’s multi-choice Test
Where oft we face the race, drenched by life’s elemental rain
And in its storm the play of dreams sometimes begins to wane

But, even as the play of darling dreams begins to wane
The world is waiting to receive the brunt of our reply
Because we are all runners of a sort, life’s sun and rain
Matters of fact that season trust and dust of days thereby
For no one runs the race of life without facing a test
And sometimes those who finish last are they who finish best

This is the day the Lord has made and He deserves our best
Who knows what waits to take the place of darling dreams that wane
What phoenix waits to rise like a prize from ashes of test
What flower waits to wow us after a shower of rain
Where our measure of happiness is oft finessed thereby
Where love’s treasures that we possess depend upon reply

It all comes down to this; the sacred onus of reply
We bear responsibility for both its worst and best
The legacy we leave behind is thus designed thereby
Not by the circumstance but by the reply to the test
Where together we can weather either the sun or rain
And perhaps fill the gaps with joy when dreams begin to wane

So then, because reply is what a life is shaped thereby
Even when dreams begin to wane let’s face both sun and rain
With nothing but our best to conquer the brunt of the test

© Janet Martin




Friday, April 12, 2019

The Art of April...(Home of the Masters;-)


  PAD Challenge day 12: For today’s prompt, take the phrase “The Art of (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem 


 Every year Ontario-ans have a love-hate affair with April!

Artist that fuels the optimist’s grin
While colors duel twixt winter and spring
Sepia surface primed for floods of green
Suffers the surges of caught in-between
While high and low flings its yearly travail
Seasonal seesaw of zephyr and gale
Eager eyes scanning the soft-swelling bud
Waiting for wonders to fan from the mud
Where April’s artist, brush dripping with flow’rs
Teases the landscape with snow-stippled showers
Vexing and cheering with gold gilt then white
Unleashing tides of chagrin and delight
While hearts and temps, like golf-balls, soar then drop
Annual tug-of-war in Time’s weather-shop
Teaching the patron of petal-plumed flit
The fine art of patience while waiting for it

© Janet Martin

Ir's Master's Weekend! Looks like a good one. Enjoy!




Sunday, April 8, 2018

Mist-kissed Past-Cast


The Winning Shot! 
More moments...
Thank-you Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler, for adding the nail-biter finish as our hearts soared and fell with the score, depending on who we were cheering for!

...and then the Past comes slipping in
To brush to nothing-more-than-mist
the bloom and blush of grin 
and groan and moments
tear or laughter-
 kissed
Where all
that yet remains from
pain and pleasure's mighty itty-bit
is the remembrance  of the moment
and what we  have learned from it

Janet~


Rory offers congratulations he dreamed perhaps, of receiving...but not this time. 

The common fellowship of we who slip and trip and fall
Is that we feel true sympathy for those who know the pain
Of broken dreams and hope that seems, at the moment, so small
But makes us brave enough to stand up tall and try again

***

Another twilight fades to shades that snuffs the countryside
 Where history is made with what we did with what we held
Then each today turns into yesterday on time's swift tide
And shapes the view we look back to as twilight shadows meld






Saturday, April 7, 2018

Augusta, Georgia, The Masters

PAD Challenge day 7: For today’s prompt, write a senses poem. 
That is, write a poem that uses one or more of your senses. 
Smell, taste, touch, sound, sight, or even a sixth sense. 
Focus in on one of them or try to incorporate them all.

For me the Masters
is a treat to all the senses but esp. sight and sound!
 

Some come to watch the challenge
Some love the wholesome scenes
Of ancient tree-lined bowers
And gentle rolling greens

Pink dogwood, flowering peach
Of jasmine and magnolia
Majestic fir and beech

Here hope and disappointment
Mete out their rivalry
Where stood  The Eisenhower Pine
And still, the Big Oak Tree

Hearts soar with each white orb lobbed high
Rush of adrenaline
Mingles with azure of pure sky
Splash…and temper’s discipline

As dreams are lived and broken
Midst reverent applause
Where man is at the mercy
Of golf’s merciless laws

Par, birdie, bogey, breath-prayer
‘Dear God, Thy will be done
But I could use a miracle
How ‘bout a hole-in-one?'

April’s bite of earth-heaven
Augusta’s glory-days
While dusk draws steeple shadows
While soft, the music plays

© Janet Martin
 




Jim and I may have different reasons for watching but...we both love it. lol;-)

 Augusta; excerpt below from this article

What makes Augusta unique is all the different types of trees and flowering shrubs that are in bloom when the Masters takes place. The 366-acre property was in the 1800s home to Fruitland Nurseries. It was then that so many different trees and plants were imported and planted there, brought from around the globe. Even when the nursery closed in 1918, the trees and plants remained and thrived until Bobby Jones discovered the property in the early 1930s.
So, when the course was designed and landscaped, it was done so around this arbor spectacular more than perhaps any course in the world. Named trees dot the course. There’s a 150-year-old specimen simply known as “The Big Oak” that stands majestically near the clubhouse. Then, there’s the Eisenhower Pine on No. 17, so named because the 34th President Dwight Eisenhower who often played the course managed to hit it so often with his tee shots.
In fact, all of the holes are named after exotic and aromatic trees such as Tea Olive (No. 1), Pink Dogwood (No. 2), Flowering Crab Apple (No. 4), Magnolia (No. 5), Yellow Jasmine (No. 8), Carolina Cherry (No. 9), Azalea (No. 13), Nandina (No. 17) and so on.
Said Nese: “The thing that strikes me is that Augusta takes so much pride in its trees and flowers and shrubs that it names its holes after them. When I think of Augusta National, that’s what I think of first — all those different growing things and their beauty.

The highs, like no other golf tournament... (Masters 2015)

as well as the lows!!(Masters 2016)
  Jordan Spieth, gracious in defeat! Remember?

Wishing all the best to each player!
Thank-you.

Monday, April 10, 2017

What a Finish!



 It's always been this way...
One person's triumph is another person's defeat...


One person's win, another's loss...
While one celebrates victory, the other suffers bitter disappointment!
 Another highly entertaining Masters makes history, What a finish, what a finish!


 Someday hopefully we can all say What a finish as we get to the end of the challenge...
Praise Jesus, because of His awesome It Is Finished we may all have the victory, not because of anything we have done (save believe) but because of everything(life eternal) Christ has won on our behalf...thus while Christians mourn our dead we know somewhere legions cheer, 
and welcome home the Victors!

It’s not our call
We’re all so small
In the grand scheme of years
That we must trust
Our dust-to-dust
To He who orders spheres

The hierarchy
Of you and me
Is always only this;
A little leap
Of wake and sleep
Before death’s genesis

So, young or old
We should behold
Each gift of day with love
In all we do
Be kind and true
Our thankfulness to prove

Then, when the Door
To Evermore
Makes Awesome Unknown known
Truth will amaze
This world of days
Was just a stepping stone

© Janet Martin

 
Yesterday's match was pure sport. 
Imagine getting to the end of life's final challenge to hear
so near...yet so far!

 

Acts 16:30-33King James Version (KJV)

30 And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
31 And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.
32 And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house.