Don't Judge a Book By The Cover

 Everywhere we turn we see a library of humanity!

Behind the whole of human race

The smiling or the somber face

The eyes we meet in passing, oh

Behind each silence or hello

A story of a life unfolds

…behind facades our gaze beholds

Ink-drops of love, of loss and gain

Of want and need, pleasure and pain

Of holding on and letting go

Shimmers of a life story, so

…because we do not know in full

The details of love’s push and pull

The landscape of life’s ups and downs

That turns the face to smiles or frowns

Because we cannot see the part

…that cradles dreams, or breaks the heart

That fuels gladness or despair

The pressing paragraphs of care/prayer

Should we not be much kinder then

To a world full of fellowmen?

…and season each response with grace

For what we see upon the face

Does not reveal the no or yes

That authors ruin or success

Where we all share the common ground

…of hope, of Something lost or found

Of longings that have not been met

Held in the brooding bay of ‘yet’

In stories of ink not yet dry

In so much more than meets the eye

Tall, short, rich, poor, plump or petite

Each bears a book that does not meet

The eye; where fingers cannot trace 

The lines that bridle human race

Into a kind of library

...penned by the likes of you and me

With no two stories quite the same

However great or small its fame

Where behind every face we meet 

Unfolds a story, bittersweet 

© Janet Martin

2 Cor.5:10

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, 

so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done 

while in the body, whether good or bad.

Rev.20:11-13

Then I saw a great white throne and the One seated on it.

Earth and heaven fled from His presence, and no place was found for them.

12And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne.

And there were open books,

and one of them was the Book of Life.

And the dead were judged according to their deeds, as recorded in the books.

13The sea gave up its dead,

and Death and Hades gave up their dead,

and each one was judged according to his deeds.