Of Felled Flower-Hours...

Happy last day of 2017!
Thank-you to all of you who drop by this humble poem-porch! 

I appreciate and love you. 

God bless you and yours as we embark on a whole new Unknown

...but for this; God's faithful mercies.

Its summer-songs are sealed

As is each autumn hour   

The winter where Year’s welcome pealed

Yielded to spring’s first flow’r   

A sentimental love

Like mist veiling life’s din

Settles across the annals of

Scenes chronicled within

…where easy come and go

Seems time’s inherent bent

Soft, swift, farewell follows hello

Of day-week-month-Year spent

And where weariness weights

The shoulders of the Old

A ray of newness radiates

Across Time’s dying wold

...where summer songs still wait

As does each autumn hour

And winter is a glorious gate

That leads to spring’s first flow’r

© Janet Martin

The More We Have Of God...

"The more we have of God, the more of Him we need!"

 This was a line in the first e-mail I opened this morning 

from someone geographically far, far away but prayerfully near!

The other day I posted a poem Heart’s Content naming things that make the heart content…

Hopefully the fullness of all small contentment does not dull but stirs hunger for More of The Giver...

May this song bless and challenge each of us!

Imagine if our want and thought

Would ever kindly lead

To where the more we have of God

The more and more we need

Imagine if, when life is kind

We lingered long with He

Who we call on when faith is blind

And filled with agony

Imagine if our love for More

Would satisfy our greed

Yet rouse a howling hunger for

The more and more we need

Imagine if when Want is filled

It drilled a gaping hole

That craves the love of God until

The body is the soul

© Janet Martin

Ps. 107:8-9

 Let them give thanks to the LORD for His lovingkindness, 

And for His wonders to the sons of men! 

For He has satisfied the thirsty soul,  

And the hungry soul He has filled with what is good.

 Psalm 34:10
The young lions do lack and suffer hunger; 

But they who seek the LORD shall not be in want of any good thing.

Luke 1:53
He has filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty.

 Matthew 5:6
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

 Matt 19:16-22
 And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”  And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.”  He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  
 The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?”   
Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, 
and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”  
 When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

Whispers...

  "I feel a strange sense of something like guilt", I said to Victoria. "I'm pouring coffee and making grocery lists while a few miles away a family is making preparation's to bury their teenage son!"

It stirs a sacred reverence for the moment, does it not?!

 

  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,  who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.  For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.

2 Cor.1:3-5 

He cups our torn and careworn hearts in hands scarred with love’s testament

He hears the agony of tears where fear and grief and pain torment

He reaches from His throne of grace where words are lost to wordless wail

The Father of mercy and comfort whispers when our whispers fail

He holds us through the flames that test the uttermost of mortal grit

He who wept tears of blood and bore death on the cross understands it

This world is not our home for long; it afflicts man with ceaseless needs

The Father of mercy and comfort whispers peace and intercedes

He gathers up the forlorn cup, replenishes its emptiness

Where we would be completely lost without His faithful promises

Hopeless, helpless, alone, undone; we could not cope without His care

The Father of mercy and comfort whispers hope to man’s despair

He is no harsh and distant judge that does not sympathize with us

This Father too bore awful loss;  His Son upon a cross, Jesus

Thus His compassion overflows; He knows the darkest, deepest vales

He, Father of mercy and comfort whispers love when our love fails

© Janet Martin

Wonder-lost...

It's a quiet afternoon,

the only sounds are the click of a keyboard in one room

and the clack of a type-writer in the next 

Victoria has long longed for a typewriter 

...since Christmas morning she is the proud owner of one:)

I remarked to her how quiet it is when two people are lost in a world of words...

Lost in a world of words

A pleasant place to be

Where thought is tossed on waves of truth

And footloose fantasy

Through phantom woods we roam

Kicking syllabic dust

Lost twixt a world of home sweet home

And winsome wanderlust

There is no here nor there

We sail and sail away

On nothing but a wooden chair

We touch worlds held at bay

Don’t look for us, my dear

The paths are strange and blurred

Lost somewhere between there and here

In wonder-worlds of word

© Janet Martin

Sentimental Jargon

Across the field steel-rivers blow

And wield a weapon full of snow

Where supper soup and firewood

Have never sounded quite so good

And I will make a pot of tea

Then will you sip a cup with me?

And shall we gently reminisce

O’er ebbs and flows of That and This?

The Warden of a formless clock

Is turning the key in a lock

That soon will seal the gold and gray

Of twenty-seventeen away

Darling, what have we learned from it

Or genuinely earned from it

Will something in its give and take

Soothe farewell’s sentimental ache

And when on soundless hinges Time

Rings out the old year with a chime

That ushers in what none have met

Will we feel hope or sad regret?

Sometimes it seems to me the years

Are but a succession of ‘Cheers’

With a few baffled blinks between

Cold winter’s white, gold summer’s green

Across the field steel-fingered bards

Shake feather-down on quiet yards

Where supper-soup and firewood

Have never sounded quite so good

© Janet Martin