Love and Learning's Celebration

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!

Today is like an invitation to 

so much joy still left to taste

because joy is unlike most delights we seize 

and devour and then,

 they disappear!

One of my most dearly loved chapters was part of today's bible-in-a-year reading!

1 Pet.1:8

Though you have not seen him, you love him; 

and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him 

and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,...

1 Pet. 1:21

Through him you believe in God, 

who raised him from the dead and glorified him,

 and so your faith and hope are in God.

In this life of love and learning

Rife with delight and dismay

May the Maker of each morning

Kindle gladness for today

May the Harbinger of Heaven

Fill our days with holy worth

For to know we are forgiven

Is the greatest joy on earth

Today unfolds like a flower

Hour-petals fade and fall

Unlike delights we devour

Joy transcends the tangible

Unlike moments softly drifting

Like snowflakes that melt away

God instills dawn’s daily gifting

With joy hinged to Endless Day

We know there is no returning

To estrangement’s yester-place

Today is for love, and learning

Fresh arrangements of God’s grace

Dawn is like an invitation

To what we ought never waste

Love and learning’s celebration

Of so much joy still to taste

© Janet Martin

1 Pet. 1:3-7

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! 

In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope

 through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. 

This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded

 by God’s power until the coming of the salvation 

that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 

6 In all this you greatly rejoice, 

though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 

7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—

of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—

may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

I love old books by or about pastors that share wisdom and humor

forged from fellowship and challenges of family and flock!

such as the book I am reading right now...

saying no to a 'money-career' offer, after devastating loss of a hurricane

to a disillusioned doctor who was trying to wash/swim

 his troubles away in the ocean every morning...

to a young girl going down a bad way...