Showing posts with label perspective. Show all posts
Showing posts with label perspective. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Of Wizened Ways...and Innocence

 

"I love it!' squealed the Little One
as she delighted in our weedy, flowery lawn...


...where, pray we never get too 'wise'
To see the world through little eyes
Or ever get too old to reach
For lessons only children teach...



We rise and take our place once more
Where morning breaks and seasons pour
The ink of poetry and such
Before our eyes, beneath our touch

…to steal our breath and test faith’s ‘yes’
Of heartache riddled happiness
Where 'nothing new under the sun'
Vexes a new generation

…and stuns us with the wizened way
Of whispers weaving yesterday
Of cares and prayers oft intertwined
Of ultimatums, God-designed

…where, by the granting of His grace
In the crook of mercy’s embrace
We take our place to do our bit
To honor the Giver of it

…where morning breaks through darksome bars
And rends night’s noose dazzled with stars
The heavens like a bud that spills
A garden above fields and hills

…where innocence and Wizened Way
Compose a baffling interplay
Where roles of teacher-student switch
Until we don’t know which is which

...where, pray we never get too 'wise/wizened'
To see the world through little eyes
Or ever get too old to reach
For lessons only children teach  


© Janet Martin

a little like a bud that spills...



a garden above fields and hills...



Psalm 100:2-5

Worship the Lord with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
3 Know that the Lord is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his[a];
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
5 For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.




Thursday, September 16, 2021

Joy-Quest #2


The Poet constantly finds him/herself torn between
the beauty of duty...


and the duty of beauty




Beauty preserved in poetry to relive and re-love !

Through showrooms diamond-dazzled crowned with boundless majesty
The way from here to There runs through Creation's gallery
Where work would often blind us if we didn't find a way
To pull the cart behind while finding joy in today

The earth is filled with glory spilling from the Artist's brush
We, all part of His story should not fret so much, or rush
Where people can perplex us and trouble will have its say
Still, let's not let it vex us but focus on joy today

The art of celebration does not need to wait until
Morrow's special occasions our cups of joy to fill
But rolling like a mist-kissed sea in generous re-lease
Dawn grants fresh opportunity to find joy's masterpiece

The more we try to teach the heart to make the most of Now
The more we cannot learn the art of keeping score, somehow
While being humbly grateful for bread, buttered on one side
We find a heaping plateful of Yet, waiting to be tried

Morning-glory unstoppered rolls through showrooms, diamond-glazed 
The way from here to There should leave us joyfully amazed
Where work could often blind us if beauty would not astound
As joy gently reminds us to just pause and look around 

Janet Martin~




Today's 'joy-ride' swept by 
and the poem I roughly drafted this morning...


...is now a vesper hymn


Dishes washed, 
tea waiting to be tasted





Friday, May 8, 2020

Whether-bound...


 As we try to plan
the way man is prone to do
we are realizing
in these unprecedented times
how uncertain the temporal is!
We don't know whether
 things will ever be what we considered 'normal' again...
We are (hopefully) reevaluating our loves and lives
with a more sober reckoning

Jer.17: 7-10

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.”
The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
“I the Lord search the heart
and test the mind,b
to give every man according to his ways,
according to the fruit of his deeds.”



Whether wearing wide-eyed wonder
Whether tethered to the plow
As the stead of seasons thunders
Through the ever-bearing Now
Whether the weather is glorious
Or it roars like a wild bull
We find so much waiting for us
When we live to be thankful

In love’s heart-knocks we encounter
In the hooray or oh-no
It does not change Mercy’s author
Or the grace whereby we go
Then, whether moaning or merry
Whether grin-giddy or grim
We will find it secondary
When we live to worship Him

Whether tranquil or white-knuckled
As we face the Great Unknown
Whether anxious or untroubled
Footloose or worked to the bone
In the quick of joy or sorrow
In the thick of pray and fight
We will find hope for tomorrow
When we live by faith, not sight

© Janet Martin







Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Process of Performance

1 Samuel 2:9
He guards the steps of His faithful ones, but the wicked perish in darkness;
 for by his own strength shall no man prevail.

a humorous look at 'anything is possible if we take baby steps'!!😁




Wherever in the calms or qualms of love and life, my dear
That we may find ourselves one thing remains perfectly clear
That where we are is not the measure of one giant leap
But the effect of step by step appointments that we keep

Our feet follow the fearless fellow simply known as Thought
Good and evil compete where what seems hidden soon is not
Then we should take a closer look at hopes and dreams we prize
The mind can be a crook and tries to trick the heart sometimes

How simple seems the left foot right foot choreography
A virile composition of Great Possibility
Where all that is accomplished, great or small for good or ill
Through step by step repetition makes all things possible

Then the conclusion of the matter when faith feels inept
Is but to trust enough to muster courage step by step
For we are always in the midst of the next tallied sum
Where step by step waits to surprise us at how far we’ve come

© Janet Martin

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional touched on a topic I've been contemplating recently...
the outcome of step-by-step

Scripture Reading; 2 Samuel 12:1-14
In northern Thailand, the Wild Boars youth soccer team decided to explore a cave together. After an hour they turned to go back and found that the entrance to the cave was flooded. Rising water pushed them deeper into the cave, day after day, until they were finally trapped more than two miles (four kilometers) inside. When they were heroically rescued two weeks later, many wondered how they had become so hopelessly trapped. Answer: one step at a time.
In Israel, Nathan confronted David for killing his loyal soldier, Uriah. How did the man “after [God’s] own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14) become guilty of murder? One step at a time. David didn’t go from zero to murder in one afternoon. He warmed up to it, over time, as one bad decision bled into others. It started with a second glance that turned into a lustful stare. He abused his kingly power by sending for Bathsheba, then tried to cover up her pregnancy by calling her husband home from the front. When Uriah refused to visit his wife while his comrades were at war, David decided he would have to die.
We may not be guilty of murder or trapped in a cave of our own making, but we’re either moving toward Jesus or toward trouble. Big problems don’t develop overnight. They break upon us gradually, one step at a time.
By Mike Wittmer




Sunday, December 8, 2019

Tick-tock's Undertow



It's quiet save the sound of the clock's tick-tock!

 Sometimes we wish for more 'bloom' as it fades
until we mourn the loss of one who never got the chance to fully fade or even begin to fade!
 Tonight the ache of mourning is raw as we enfold a widow in our congregation
in tears and prayer...

Growing old does not stop
Until God wills it so
The momentum of tick and tock
A profound undertow
Where choice and circumstance
Adeptly intertwines
As we grapple with what God grants
While youth its bloom resigns

To make each moment count
Is more than a cliché
They are the sparkles from a fount
That never hits replay
Therefore we ought to prize
The gift of growing old
And kindly, humbly recognize
Time slipping through our hold

The ache for those we love
Who have gone on before
Keens a scared awareness of
What was and is no more
Where, as the seasons pass
We come to realize
How swift the sand runs through the glass
That drains the fountain dry

Dear Lord, bless those who mourn
For friend or family
Lord, heal the heart broken and torn
By sorrow’s agony
Awake in us hope’s boast
As by your grace we go
And teach us how to make the most
Of tick-tock’s undertow

© Janet Martin



 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, 
for He who promised is faithful.
Heb.10:23


Monday, May 20, 2019

Looking Beyond What We See


 Yesterday's Sunday morning message challenged us to rethink our attitudes on suffering !
Often we pray to be freed/healed from them when in fact, scripture teaches otherwise!

 ...and then, while I was working on this post up came this post on Ann Voskamp's blog!

Look, but look beyond the beauty brimming from the beaming bloom
Look, but look beyond the duty of the modest mop and broom
Look beyond the pond that sparkles like a rhinestone in the sun
Look, but look a little deeper than the sweep of seasons spun

Look, but look beyond the panoramas stirring sacred sighs
Look, but look beyond the frond that lavishes the earth, then dies
Look beyond time’s bitty bubble that does not burst to thin air
Look, but look beyond the trouble to the One who put it there

Look beyond the work that is more than the sweat of toil to sod
Look beyond the hurt that sometimes drains us enough to trust God
Look beyond want’s fondest ‘druthers’ to the Place of faith’s reward
Look, but look beyond the surface to the grace of Christ our Lord

© Janet Martin



  And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 
1 Pet.5:10 
 
 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, 
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; 
2 Cor.4:17
 
 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, 
and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 
Phil.3:10