Broken Strings...

I prayed for my daughter in TO this morning 

but often I am tongue-tied in knowing exactly how to pray...

Yet overcome with awe that we may boldly approach the throne of grace...

 In the morning I like to read a poem or two...this morning I laughed out loud at how perfect and timely the poems were on the first page I opened the book to...

(Alfred Lord Tennyson was the first poet I fell in school-girl love with
when I read his poem The Brook )

 This one required a few reads to let the depth of the lines sink in...

For what we ought to pray, oh Lord

We often humbly guess

Your Higher Way vexes the chord

That tunes our happiness

We, pioneers of skin and bones

Oft know not where to start

You press your ear against our groans

And hear our heart of hearts

….and all those thing we do not tell

Your kind discretion knows

You see beneath breath's fragile shell

Where want and need oppose

So when we pray, Lord, as we raise

Our praise and agony

Gather these broken strings and frays

Into a melody

...and turn our doubt to humble trust

Transfix our Surety

Beyond this mist of dust-to-dust

To where no prayer will be

© Janet Martin

A promise to those who take refuge in the Lord, not idols.

When you cry out for help,
    let your collection of idols save you!
The wind will carry all of them off,
    a mere breath will blow them away.
But whoever takes refuge in me
    will inherit the land
    and possess my holy mountain.”

Isa.57:13

Dear God, how oft the thing that draws us to You is nothing we would ever choose! 

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
⁹ “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.
¹⁰ As the rain and the snow
    come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
    without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
    so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
¹¹ so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
    It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
    and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

Isa. 55:8-11

I've posted this song many times because I love it...