Showing posts with label morning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label morning. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Beneath a Rush of Rose and Gold



A glorious spring-like morning 
can't help but rouse a humble tip o' the poet's hat
to the Giver

Wishing/praying God's blessing of joy to you today!
(my extra-special joy comes today in the form
of two little girls who used to be in my childcare!)



Earth’s ridges reappear beneath a rush of rose and gold
Birds warble welcome-hymns of cheer where days to years run bold
From the hand of the Giver like a bud bursting with hope
Like a gleam-giddy river as the snow melts from the slope
Light eddies into nooks and crooks like ocean-surge run wild
It overflows the air like brooks, like laughter of a child
And suddenly, like lambs in spring, faith leaps with joy, reborn
Beneath the rush of mercy’s Wing, the night is turned to morn

© Janet Martin

Acts 17:24-31

The God who made the world and everything in it 
is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 
25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything.
 Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 
26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; 
and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.
 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, 
though he is not far from any one of us. 
28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[b
As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[c]

29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, 
we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—
an image made by human design and skill. 
30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, 
but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 
31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. 
He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”




Saturday, February 24, 2024

For Today's Roses (still taking shape)


Some days life is a lovely maze of roses and butterflies.
And some days are more like thorn pricks and bee stings.
No matter what kind of day we are having,
only we are responsible for how we reply...

(Yes! This sunny stretch is turning my thoughts gardenward😀💖)

Wishing you a rose-giddy weekend!



Dawn unfolds like a butterfly alighting on earth’s supine pose
Once more courage and faith ally, to try the bud that holds the rose
Where, dust of trust pulses with dreams and wholesome opportunity
Where, though circumstance sets the scene, reply is up to you and me

Where we are always young enough to do the good we ought, to pray
To take and make the most of love before life’s flower falls away
And speak the kind and gentle word and live to give rather than get
And keep our focus undeterred, on Due Season not rendered yet

Then, not grow weary in the good we ought to do, ere reaping starts
And, when love is misunderstood, to answer with forgiving hearts
Then we will never lack for joy, but always find fresh ways to gape
At buds beginning to deploy today’s roses still taking shape

© Janet Martin

Gal.6:9
And let us not grow weary while doing good,
 for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.


Yesterday was pleasant on the southside deck...


Today temps have plummeted to more seasonal settings


Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Sunrise Symphony

The past few mornings we are being treated
 to being greeted by
much appreciated welkin symphonies
after a long stretch of gloomy daybreaks!


An introduction starts to play from welkin symphonies...



An introduction starts to play from welkin symphonies
It fills the threshold of Today with thrilling harmonies
As melodies of blush and gold unfold the hailing sphere
While we, with rapt’rous gaze behold night’s shadows disappear

We lift our eyes above the stage of trouble’s wage unfurled
To feast upon the music page God hoists above the world
To bow on morning’s grandstand with stutter-uttered ‘oh my’
And join the worship anthems no lyrics can satisfy

Hope celebrates its anchor as pink hallelujahs peal
Joy’s chipped cup runneth over with mercy’s refurbished zeal
Faith transcends fear’s foreboding as welkin symphonies spill
To drown dread’s dismal goading with thunders of ‘peace, be still’

Exaltation’s hymn overflows before our lifted gaze
The introduction crescendos and sets our sights ablaze
Earth and sky’s voices coalesce, they cannot be ignored
In the Beauty of Holiness we worship you, oh LORD

© Janet Martin

Exaltation’s hymn overflows before our lifted gaze
The introduction crescendos and sets our sights/hearts ablaze...

Psalm 96:9
Oh, worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness!
Tremble before Him, all the earth.


 

 

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

An Evolving Evaluation (of Evidence)



Today's poem began with a 'blush hush/rush' soon filled with workday noise!
 Happy workday, everyone! 
(and my heart/prayers go out to all who wish they could work and can't)
I hope today's poem grants a splash of joy and good cheer!




This poem kind of evolved with the dissolving of daybreak...
from texts from Young Mother...

...from rumble of industry

 

from not knowing where to begin
to count the ways of Evidence of Him...


all on a backdrop of Mercy's evidence renewed...


Dawn’s blush hush/rush fills with workday noise
Nature’s showcase unveils fresh joys
That none can claim with boastful pride
Where colors of the countryside
Like ever-changing works of art
Amaze the mind and thrill the heart
Evoking a hymn, like a prayer
In praise to One beyond compare
Whose ways we cannot comprehend
Whose faithfulness will never end
Whose Word is trustworthy and true
Whose promises naught can undo

Where, as dawn slips on workday hues/shoes
As industry resumes its dues
And motherhood its sacred charge
As dawn unmoors its teeming barge
How humbly wonderful to know
Whose goodness none can overthrow
Whose hope is sure, whose hand will guide
From break of day to eventide
Where nature’s showcase spills God’s heart
In unparalleled works of art
Where earth and sky declare His name
Inviting/compelling us to do the same

A wealth of wonder waits. Ahoy
Nature’s showcase erupts with joy
We hardly know where to begin
To count the frames, we see God in
Creation’s cradles stream and brim
With countless evidence of Him
Making more pitiful the clod
Who clings to denials of God
Making meeker all who believe
Because of the grace we receive
Making gladder the humbler prayer
To He who knows each creature care

© Janet Martin

Romans 1:20
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—
his eternal power and divine nature—
have been clearly seen, 
being understood from what has been made, 
so that people are without excuse.

Whose hope is sure, whose hand will guide
From break of day to eventide...







Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Morning (or Afternoon) Minuet



I needed to head out before I got this morning's post up...
Better late than never😅💗


I 'adopted' a bit of Anne of Green Gables' logic this morning
as I headed outdoors for my morning 'commune' with
my Heavenly Father...


In Ontario we are accustomed to white landscapes in February
making this year's gray-blue-bronze panoramas seem sort of surreal! 




The music of a new day starts to play upon the air
Earth emerges from beneath the soft surge of morning-tide
Where something like a greeting hymn and something like a prayer
Erases slumber’s eulogy from waking countryside

Hope’s precedence persuades us to face forward and look up
And bids us by the grace of God, once more to hoist faith’s cup
And trust Him for whatever spills to overflow its brim

Then sing to Him, whose love anoints/appoints each virgin steppingstone 
And bow before the one whose perfect will, will lead the way
And worship He who shepherds us through valleys of Unknown 
And trust the Hand that orchestrates each moment of each day

The music of a new day crescendos and fills the sky 
A little like a lilting celestial serenade
Or like a welkin minuet that kindles love's reply
With raised voices, to rejoice in this day the Lord has made 


© Janet Martin

Psalm 5:3
My voice You shall hear in the morning, O LORD; 
In the morning I will direct it to You, And I will look up.


Psalm 59:16
But I will sing of Your strength 
and proclaim Your loving devotion in the morning.
 For You are my fortress, 
my refuge in times of trouble.




Lamentations 3:22-23
English Standard Version

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;[a]
his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

Tuesday, December 12, 2023

More than It (December Dawn) Seems...


This morning kicked off its tick-tock shaped sun-kissed socks and shoes
before I was able to complete the poem 
that burst into wanting-to-be shortly after waking...

The beauty of meditation 
and the duty of obligation
 always com/posing stiff competition!

Sometimes a poem culminates best 
not pressed/suppressed by sheer determination
but by releasing its fragments until they return
in whispers begging to be penned.
So it was today...
I began dipping chocolate bars and maybe because my
fingertips were chocolatey and my mind at ease
lines teased and flickered,  begging me to wash my hands
and capture them before they waft irretrievably away 😂🙏

On Saturday's post I forgot to flip over the recipe card 
for homemade Chocolate Bars, to show dipping instructions.
I am sharing the dipping instructions instead,  from Jim's (husbands') aunt.
(who makes perfect chocolate bars every Christmas)
Melt your preferred variety of chocolate (I used semi-sweet blocks)
over LOW heat. 
(put water in a pot and set another pot on top and let  the chocolate melt at 
around 3 or 4 temperature on the burner.)
(add a bit of shortening or Paro-wax for glossier finish.)


Dip and cool!


This morning showcased a most welcome sunrise after a stretch of unsunny dawns!


Dawn seems to wear a prayer-like solemnity where new mercies spill
As heavens pale and lift the veil that yester-dusk lowered until
We couldn’t see December’s close-cropped lea, the dark and leafless copse
Etched in stark magnificence against brilliant, westerly backdrops
That dimmed and disappeared; earth’s tiered sweeps shrouded by a sea
That drew away Today laden with ample opportunity

Dawn seems to sing! Every morning the old is reborn and made new
As mercy grants rekindled chance to learn to love as we ought to
Humbly aware of He who cares and helps us bear our shares of Must
Before we pass through that last door of Soul-to-God and dust to dust
And thus, because life is precious and Time a Very Fleeting Flow’r
Dawn seems to wake an urgent ache to make the most of every hour

….each moment rife with unlived life becoming lived; the untouched, touched
And often we forget what we beget as dawn is crudely crushed
By hands and feet; demands compete and how we meet them will become
Without disguise, the ink that dries in a Book tabling each day’s sum
While ticking clocks keep kicking off the shoes and socks at dawn reborn
And sometimes we are prone to see nothing at all but 'morn-to-morn'

…and often dawn seems here and gone without a second thought or prayer
A gift from God we barely nod at as it drifts, not to thin air
But to a page, where age to age is recording daily reply
Its telling proof spelling the truth that will be futile to deny
Then, pray that want may be subdued by gratitude as mercy streams
Renewed; where dawn is like a glimpse of Heaven bursting at its seams

© Janet Martin

And, let we forget!!!
As true now as in the days of Jeremiah's lament...

Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
They are
 new every morning;

Great is Your faithfulness.
 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I hope in Him!”
Lam.3:22-24











Friday, November 24, 2023

Love and Learning's Celebration


Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Today is like an invitation to 
so much joy still left to taste
because joy is unlike most delights we seize 
and devour and then,
 they disappear!



One of my most dearly loved chapters was part of today's bible-in-a-year reading!

Though you have not seen him, you love him; 
and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him 
and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,...

1 Pet. 1:21
Through him you believe in God, 
who raised him from the dead and glorified him,
 and so your faith and hope are in God.


In this life of love and learning
Rife with delight and dismay
May the Maker of each morning
Kindle gladness for today

May the Harbinger of Heaven
Fill our days with holy worth
For to know we are forgiven
Is the greatest joy on earth

Today unfolds like a flower
Hour-petals fade and fall
Unlike delights we devour
Joy transcends the tangible

Unlike moments softly drifting
Like snowflakes that melt away
God instills dawn’s daily gifting
With joy hinged to Endless Day

We know there is no returning
To estrangement’s yester-place
Today is for love, and learning
Fresh arrangements of God’s grace

Dawn is like an invitation
To what we ought never waste
Love and learning’s celebration
Of so much joy still to taste

© Janet Martin

1 Pet. 1:3-7
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,
 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. 
This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded
 by God’s power until the coming of the salvation 
that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 
6 In all this you greatly rejoice, 
though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 
7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—
of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—
may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

I love old books by or about pastors that share wisdom and humor
forged from fellowship and challenges of family and flock!
such as the book I am reading right now...


saying no to a 'money-career' offer, after devastating loss of a hurricane



to a disillusioned doctor who was trying to wash/swim
 his troubles away in the ocean every morning...


to a young girl going down a bad way...




Friday, November 17, 2023

Gifted Gravity...

 

2 Cor.6:1-2
As God’s fellow workers,a then, we urge you
not to receive God’s grace in vain.
  2For He says:
“In the time of favor I heard you,
and in the day of salvation I helped you.”b
Behold, now is the time of favor;
 now is the day of salvation!



Sometimes, sorrow for lost souls
is almost more than hearts can bear,
But love clings to love's sacred sorrow
and turns its tears to prayer on prayer

***

Night’s dark wave on dawn’s shoreline breaks
Shadows are drawn away
A tide of humanity wakes
To face another day
To tread the Sands of Time that brace
A very sacred Verge
Where morning thunders with God’s grace
Where slumbering masses surge

The Preacher cries in Jesus’ Name
Awake!’ where footsteps roll
Past gaping graves that soon will tame
The dust, but not the Soul
Alas, the House of Prayer, has turned
Into a den of thieves
The faith that saves obtusely spurned
For a handful of leaves/sheaves

The Son is trodden underfoot
Understanding defiled
Where wrong is right and evil good
Opprobrium runs wild
‘Repent, repent!’ The preacher pleads
While the proud crowds rebel
And poison Innocence with creeds
That lead to death and hell

The ears that hear are far and few
So too, the eyes that see
Yet, morning breaks, and stirs anew
Time’s gifted gravity
Light shines into the dark once more
Hope takes a holy breath
Where Sands of Time compose a shore
That cannot withstand death

Behold, Salvation’s Day unfurled
From greatest to the least
Life cries into a dying world
Dawn spills a mercy-feast
Again, the Patient Preacher takes
Love's post most tenderly
For lost souls, on the verge that breaks
Into eternity

© Janet Martin

2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise,
 as some understand slowness. 
Instead he is patient with you,
 not wanting anyone to perish, 
but everyone to come to repentance.





Tuesday, October 17, 2023

What Kind of Morning-Person Are You?





(whole precious page below)

I wish I was a 'don't-hit-snooze!' morning person, but I'm not.
I tell myself hitting snooze helps prepare me 
to crawl out of that big, black hole of cozy oblivion,
 but it is in reality a bit of a lazy habit I intend to break! 
Keep me accountable, okay??😅💓


Also I am a 'coffee-before-talky-please' person
which I have no inclination to change...


Another gorgeous day well on its way...
'God, guide and keep'🙏



Across dawn’s slumber-heavy world alarm clocks buzz and beep
As drowsy bodies are uncurled and startled from sweet sleep
Some hit new day’s ground running, others stumble to a cup
Of fresh brewed tea or java, yawning, stretching, waking up

Some celebrate cognizance with verbose vigor, some groan
Some at best, muster unintelligible monotone
Some leap like fleet gazelles, while others hit snooze and deflate
For ten more minutes before it is time to acclimate

…to ‘night is done!! awake, awake, it’s time to rise and shine’
For today is a-wasting like a flower on time’s vine
Dreamlands jolt to reality beneath unfolding skies
Where duty calls and bumper-to-bumper traffic replies

Blink-blink, morning turns pink, as slumber’s blanket dissipates
Some sing for joy, some suffer pain and sorrow’s testing weights🙏🙏😥
Some exercise, some wise in their own eyes don’t think to pray
Some do; but all share in the common ground we call Today

© Janet Martin

This hymn, learned  when I was a child,
helped to shape a lifelong, holy habit!!




Lyrics by Mary A. Kidder

  1. Ere you left your room this morning,
    Did you think to pray?
    In the name of Christ our Savior,
    Did you sue for loving favor,
    As a shield today?
    • Refrain:
      Oh, how praying rests the weary!
      Prayer will change the night to day;
      So when life seems dark and dreary,
      Don’t forget to pray.
  2. When you met with great temptation,
    Did you think to pray?
    By His dying love and merit,
    Did you claim the Holy Spirit
    As your guide and stay?
  3. When your heart was filled with anger,
    Did you think to pray?
    Did you plead for grace, my brother,
    That you might forgive another
    Who had crossed your way?
  4. When sore trials came upon you,
    Did you think to pray?
    When your soul was bowed in sorrow,
    Balm of Gilead did you borrow
    At the gates of day?

As regular visitors may guess, I am reading
the beautiful book of Isaiah right now!
Today's reading included this portion-






Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Before Today's Unknown Begins...

Before I could get this morning's poem up
today's unknowns began to emerge;
some ever-so-cute-and-sweetly!!


Grand-sonny was so amused and intrigued by the black thing with a
curly string attached to it, and gramma talked to it!!


I put it to his ear so he could hear grandpa!
(Grandpa is one of his favs!)


Thank-you God, for so many blessings 
but best of all, Your Word
to light life's path every day!
Below, part of today's 'Lamplight'...




Before duty’s demands consume our time and energy
Before life’s brunt of cares vexes idyllic poetry
Before fresh break of day is drawn away by moment-steads
Or brushed aside, like toast-crumbs to a tide of wants and needs

Before Today’s Unknown begins to emerge into view
And lessons yet to learn challenge what once we thought we knew
Before what none can trick or tame is snuffed like candlelight
And tucked beneath a quilt pieced with patchwork of morn-to-night

Before we rush headlong into the fray of say-and-do
We should remember who we should surrender today to
And touch the hem of He who said ‘Thy faith has made thee whole’
He who is Giver and Taker and Keeper of each soul

Before we forge ahead where truth and temptation compete
Pray, Lord, we lift Your word to be a lamp unto our feet
A light unto our path, so, in whatever life may bring
Our souls may find sweet refuge in the shadow of Your Wing

© Janet Martin

tackling some end-of-season harvest this afternoon!


Psalm 63:5-8

My soul is satisfied as with the richest of foods;

with joyful lips my mouth will praise You.

6When I remember You on my bed,

I think of You through the watches of the night.

7For You are my help;

I will sing for joy in the shadow of Your wings.

8My soul clings to You;

Your right hand upholds me.





Wednesday, September 20, 2023

Where Ethereal Oceans Skim...

 

So much beauty to savor,
Midst much sorrow and woe
Not by our merit or favor
but by God's mercy/goodness we go...

***
I had just typed the first two lines of this poem
when the phone rang. Jim was loading cattle at a nearby farm and wondered
if I could bring him a fried egg sandwich so I did and this turned into
an early morning errand run,
 granting these sweet photo ops!

Rush hour on rural Ontario roads...


Pastoral pastures...



Daybreak rolls like a golden sea
Across the countryside...



Daybreak rolls like a golden sea
Across the countryside
A fleeting flood of majesty
Beneath hope’s groaning stride

Where we of sundry circumstance
Of mingled bittersweet
Are dearly loved by He who grants
Dawn’s sea beneath our feet

Across time’s scape of gaping graves
Ethereal oceans skim
The Giver walks amidst the waves
And bids us lean on Him

© Janet Martin

2 Cor.4:18
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,
 but on what is unseen, 
since what is seen is temporary, 
but what is unseen is eternal.