More Than Word-Play

You can’t control the talents He gives you, no doubt about that. 

But you can control the effort you put forth with those talents.”

 - Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw

“I didn’t do anything to deserve this gift,” Kershaw recently told FCA Magazine.

 “God gave me an ability to throw a baseball. 

He chose me for a reason, and I want to honor Him with that. 

You can’t control the talents He gives you, no doubt about that. 

But you can control the effort you put forth with those talents.”

'hopefully', (I often remind myself)
'our 'say' is more than word-play!'

What are we doing with what God gave us?
A month ago at a family celebration for our parent's 55th wedding anniversay
my niece Keturah sang the above song in a beautiful, pure
God's gift-to-her voice!

 No matter what let's honor God with the gifts He gave us!
Let's not be strangled by the dangling noose of comparison!
There is only one you or me!
Let's be the best version we can be.

The crepuscule of onyx tulle pulls back its ether door

And rains across our gain and loss the albatross of More

As have-and-hold of gray and gold unfolds what none can see

The fabric of its live-laugh-love, glove of mortality

Time’s joy-and-sorrow, beg-and-borrow-morrow-turned-today

Entrusts to us the Must that teaches dust-to-dust to pray

Where full extent of man’s lament, hard bent with Mercy’s ‘nope’

Cannot out-blot, no matter what, the God of Living Hope

The knife of life carves from silk scarves of morn, rock-solid cast

No one can woo a re-do from the avenue of Past

Where streams of dreams and schemes that overflow thought’s slipp’ry banks

Are not worth much until touch yields its clutch to humble thanks

Today is more than word-play; ‘say’ is nothing without ‘do’

The shuttle of rebuttal does not cuddle/coddle me or you

The matrix of kicks, sticks and stones and pricks of thorn-nicked woes

Lest we forget, is ever yet, the stem that holds the rose

© Janet Martin

 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, 

do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, 

giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Col.3:17