Showing posts with label immortality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label immortality. Show all posts

Saturday, June 24, 2023

Of Mortal and Divine

When every blade-leaf-petal is
dazzled with silver drops
we who behold would be amiss
not to pause, and praise God



The Hand of Time is, in essence the Hand of God!
So in troubled times like these,
we take heart for we are in Good Hands...

The Hand of Time unfolds flowers...







The lifespan of a flower is brief!
(see the transformation of a week in the photos below)




The Hand of God holds eternity!!
It bids us consider well whose Hand
we choose to trust!

***

Eccles.12:6-7
Remember your Creator
 before the silver cord is [b]loosed,
Or the golden bowl is broken,
Or the pitcher shattered at the fountain,
Or the wheel broken at the well.
7Then the dust will return to the earth as it was,
And the spirit will return to God who gave it.

***

Outstretched, across the land and sea
Without form to define
This indelible unity
Where mortal and divine

...cradles the earth and tips yon purse
With dawn’s momentous lure
Once more life's for better or worse
Runs rife, to rich and poor

To test the sacred symmetry
That binds body and soul
And balances humanity
Against the holy Whole

Of love’s sovereign authority
Above sky, sea, and sod
Mist mingles with eternity
The Hand of Time and God

A flower cannot keep its prime
As dust's due decks the sod
The Soul slips through the hand of Time
Into the hand of God

© Janet Martin

Job 14:1-2

Man, who is born of woman,
is short of days and full of trouble.
2Like a flower, he comes forth, then withers away;
like a fleeting shadow,
 he does not endure.



Wednesday, December 11, 2019

This Mortality


My, my, but mortal is master of disaster,
when lured by lust of the flesh, lust of the eye and pride of life!
 (For everything in the world--the lust of the flesh, 
the lust of the eyes, 
and the pride of life--
comes not from the Father 
but from the world.)
1 John 2:16 



It heaves upon the crest of earth in birth and death-wrought spree
It laughs and grieves abreast the breadth of immortality
As Time set in four-season spans twirls like a carousel
And man embarks and exits ‘neath the tolling of its bell
Where we prove, as we learn to love, the nature of the beast
Where deathless soul instills the glove upon which moments feast
And none of us can circumvent the Hour that must be
When we are called to shed the tent of This Mortality

It boasts; oh God forgive us when we forget Mercy’s girt
As we dare to puff out our chests and strut our stuff of dirt
As we forget to smote our breasts and cry out, ‘what is man’
As we ignore the Author and Finisher of our ‘can
As we make wealth an idol rather than worship’s employ
As we take without uttering one phrase of praise or joy
Where grace is always greater than This Mortality’s mess
And God is always faithful to forgive if we confess

Each travels through this world but once toward a binding goal
When This Mortality becomes the chariot of the soul
Where for now we must all partake of trust’s manifold tiers
As waves of hope and heartache surge and merge with days and years
While dreams are dashed and born anew and lashed by winds of change
And all of us are headed to what Last Gasp will estrange
As we enter that which remains life’s Greatest Mystery
When Mortal sheds its rags and puts on Immortality

© Janet Martin

 For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable
 and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come to pass: 
 “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”…
1 Cor.15:52-54