Student Card

With new-born breath we are enrolled

Into the School of Life

Where no one is too young or old

To taste Time’s joy or strife

Life spills its lessons in the moil

Of toil’s everyday vaunt

Its students we, of sorrow’s spoil

Of have and hold and want

The hunger of life’s loss and love

Begins on birth’s first page

First touch, first step, first word, we move

From age to age to age

…as from one class we graduate

Only to humbly find

New lessons laid on learning's plate

To test heart, hand and mind

The Teacher is a tree, a child,

A thousand voices veiled

Within the winsome and the wild

Of battles won and failed

The Master is a loving God

Not harsh or cruel or grim

He scrawls our lessons on earth’s sod

To prove our need of Him

The wise take heed and ever learn

The wonder of it all

While foolish loathe, spurn and return

 A wasted, crumpled ball

Once more Time opens up its door

This day the Lord has made

Invites us to learn and explore

Toward our passing grade

© Janet Martin

I held a new-born recently marveling at her response to touch, her need as she whimpered in hunger...

Her Grandma shares a burden of sorrows for a daughter being tested beyond understanding, yet filled with joy at the wonder of new life; ah, the spectrum of life-lessons, intense, hard, beautiful...