Of We Who Yet Remain...

 

Approx. 15 min. after I took these photos it was pouring rain! now the sun has returned...

He who forms the mountains, who creates the wind, and who reveals his thoughts to mankind, who turns dawn to darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth-- the LORD God Almighty is his name. Amos 4:13

From heaven’s atrium of bluest blues

Kindly the touch of God from darkness woos

Daylight, the dew-fed night dies on the air

And we who yet remain are caught up where

The orbit of time’s trek from east to west

Returns us to its century-steeped test

And who of us can prophecy or tell

What waits to spill from gates celestial?

Or who can boast to see beyond the veil

Of a mere moment what Time will exhale?

But this we know, while gasps to eons move

These three abide of faith and hope and love

What good is gained to let our thought-feet stray

Where fear and guilt steal faith and hope away?

Ah love, before death’s white dust stills our cry

And fills this cup where now we strain and sigh

Help us to know you better, how your thirst

Is quenched in cups of water given first

To others thirstier; how faith, hope, love

Fitted together are not often proved

Upon a pedestal where men applaud

But on our faces before Holy God

And on our knees where faith and hope are hard

And  love is not a word but hands help-scarred

The morning blushes with hope’s hallowed wraith

The traffic rushes on highways of faith

Toward Unknowns; for what but faith can lend

To us the courage to do more than just pretend

As we encounter from Love’s nail-scarred hands

New tests to prove where our allegiance stands

Lest our volley of verbal acclaim

When tried would put our pious prose to shame

…from Heaven’s atrium of bluest blues

Kindly the touch of God from darkness woos

Daylight; its appetite ignites the air

And we who yet remain go forth with prayer

© Janet Martin  

  And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Cor. 13:13