Let's Take a Winter Stroll

 The photos present a condensed version of today's poem😊

(most of the brook is frozen but

here and there its song bursts through! Delightful.)

Let’s stroll beneath the blue-sky wraith that draws us to applaud

And scale hope’s slopes not veiled by faith to touch the hand of God

Let’s consider the lilies clad in winter-white array

And sing as glorious throbs of gladness carry cares away

Let’s linger in a theater of hill and dell and tree

To watch the brook meander on its journey to the sea

Let’s keep a careful distance from the clock’s determined mien

That steals with plum persistence into shadows long and lean

Let’s pay closer attention to masterpiece-laden trays

Where inept comprehension staggers beneath breathless gaze

Let’s weigh the weightless treasure of Now’s equilibrium

Stunned by the mighty measure of Moment’s momentous sum

Let’s wonder at suggestions of what eye has never seen

And ramble through reflections of summer’s unraveled green

Let’s trace gracious caresses that evoke a hymn so pure

From frosted fronds and tresses etched on bottomless azure

Let’s find a sabbath feeling stealing through want’s workaday

Holy, holy, the healing where nature’s orchestras play

Let’s listen to the rise and fall of fallow wind-strummed span

Until we grow so very small and utter ‘what is man’

Let’s look beyond the obstacles that mar our every days

And marvel at the miracles that preach, teach and amaze

Let’s bear love’s yoke of broken hurt with footsteps worship-shod

And scale hope’s frozen slopes of dirt to glimpse the face of God

© Janet Martin

Psalm 8

O Lord, our Lord,

How excellent is Your name in all the earth,

Who have set Your glory above the heavens!

2 Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants

You have [b]ordained strength,

Because of Your enemies,

That You may silence the enemy and the avenger.

3 When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,

4 What is man that You are mindful of him,

And the son of man that You visit[c] him?

5 For You have made him a little lower than [d]the angels,

And You have crowned him with glory and honor.

6 You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;

You have put all things under his feet,

7 All sheep and oxen—

Even the beasts of the field,

8 The birds of the air,

And the fish of the sea

That pass through the paths of the seas.

9 O Lord, our Lord,

How excellent is Your name in all the earth!