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Friday, June 14, 2024

The Present Is a Very Fleeting Lease...


The wheels of this poem have been turning for a bit;
the first stanza from a book my sister gave me for my birthday
gave it the 'push' it needed...




...and everything that does not come from faith is sin.

But hark! On dawn’s horizon mercies toll...






The present is a very fleeting lease
Yet, ever in the present we exist
Future fuels present, then past’s increase
Time’s holy toll is futile to resist
It is easy to slip into sin’s snare
If we dash, unequipped, into its lair

God, what folly godless desires are
Worldly Want squanders Opportunity
While leaping restlessly from star to star
Goaded by nothing but sheer vanity
That deadens senses to a Mute Parade
Drawing the soul to where the Whole is weighed

There is a grief no gladness can console
To reap a sorry harvest of regret
But hark! On dawn’s horizon mercies toll
Oh, pray that sorry sorrow will beget
Repentance; it is not too late to fall
Upon our knees and for redemption call

There are two roads, and only two, oh God
One leads to You, the other leads away
One hones a howling thirst for fleeting laud
The other flaunts no guile to lure or sway
No pleasure to appeal to Sight’s demand
Yet pleasures evermore at Your right hand

Once We were young, who now are growing old
The Subtle Present rushes through our skin
Ere soon the corp’ral coffin will enfold
The carriage Deathless Soul is dwelling in
Oh God, forbid we fall prey to a lie
While the deceiver winks a cunning eye

To ‘dare to be a Daniel’ in an age
That scorns the Sov’reignty of One True God
To fight on a Babylonian stage
Unthwarted by superficial façade
Is not for faint-hearted Intention’s crack
With one hand on the plow while looking back

I shudder at my sad, salt-pillared past
God redeemed; Wisdom cries in mammon-ed streets
Where Sodom and Gomorrah’s shadows cast
Proof of patterns idolatry repeats
How great the darkness devoid of God’s Word
Disobedience prospers, undeterred

Ah, pray that Present Generations heed
The signs prophets foretold about That Day
When Judgment and Redemption intercede
Salvation’s Final Triumph on display
Without your Word to be our Lamp and Light
Oh God, how futile is each war we fight

Oh God, come quickly, oh God, wait, I pray
Where noise-embellished darkness roils and groans
While your grace all-sufficient, waits to save;
Argument and excuse never atones
God, rend the veil that blinds perception's ken
The present is a fleeting lease. Amen

© Janet Martin

2 Tim.3:1-5&14-17 BSB
But understand this: In the last days terrible times will come.
 2For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money,
 boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,
 3unloving, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control,
 brutal, without love of good, 
4traitorous, reckless, conceited, 
lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
 5having a form of godliness but denying its power. 
Turn away from such as these!

But as for you, continue in the things you have learned and firmly believed, 
since you know from whom you have learned them. 
15From infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, 
which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
 16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, 
for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 
17so that the man of God may be complete, 
fully equipped for every good work.







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