Crucial Consideration

Earth's annual flower-carousel has begun to twirl...

and, our days are like the flowers...

a brief bloom at best!

1 Peter 1:24

For, “All flesh is like grass, 

and all its glory like the flowers of the field; 

the grass withers and the flowers fall,

Considering that you and I

Are here for such a little bit

It behooves all of us to try

To make the very most of it

To do the very best we can

To honor God with word and deed

To truly love our fellowman

And not to want more than we need

©Janet Martin

Ps.103:15-18

As for man, his days are like grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
16For the wind passes over it, and it is [b]gone,
And its place remembers it no more.
17But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting
On those who fear Him,
And His righteousness to children’s children,
18To such as keep His covenant,
And to those who remember His commandments to do them.

Measure of Mortality...

May and June are months for us, that include many milestone celebrations,

reminding us to cherish each other while we may,

and trust the Hands that measure out our

mortality...before immortality!

1 Cor.15:54

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable,

 and the mortal with immortality, 

then the saying that is written will come true:

 “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

I LOVE misty, minty-green June mornings

a-dazzle with dewdrops!

Our measure of mortality

Our sum of numbered days

Are not ordered by you or me

But by God's perfect ways

The author of each life ordains

Its beginning and end

The sacred part between remains

That for which we contend

Not for our own merit or worth

But by the grace of He

Who made the heavens and the earth

Who fashioned you and me

…and measures our mortality

With love beyond our ken

Whose thoughts and ways are trustworthy

Forevermore. Amen

Fleet measure of mortality

Frail veil of breath between

The entrance to eternity

And the part that is seen  

© Janet Martin

2 Cor.4:18

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, 

since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Rom.11:33-36

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God

! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!

34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has become His counselor?”

35 “Or who has first given to Him

And it shall be repaid to him?”

36 For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, 

to whom be glory forever.

 Amen.

Of (Fleeting) Time and Place

I'm currently working at painting and preparing a vacant bedroom

as a spare bedroom (aka grandchildren's sleepover room😊😉💓)

Two coats of primer later, Matt's old room colour, 

the colour of a basketball, is simply a memory!

painted during the boyhood basketball phase of his life;

 a phase long overtaken by more pressing matters, (like mortgages,😅)

Proof of the fleeting POOF!! 

of stages and ages, interests and passions!

Reminding us to build on the eternal 

rather than the temporal because...

 ...the things which are seen are temporary, 

 the things which are not seen are eternal.

2 Cor.4:18

I finished listening to this book yesterday as I painted...

God's Smuggler

The book is filled with profound thoughts and experiences 

but the one below, near the end of the book

made me put down my brush and jot it down!

Starkly relevant for the age we are in...

(When, after gaining access to a country through great effort and pains,

 he (Brother Andrew) proceeded to hand out Bibles, but no one seemed interested)

And he was struck with this revelation-

'Persecution was an enemy the church had met and mastered many times.

Indifference could prove to be a far more dangerous foe!'

**

Pray, we do not slip into indifference, 

but live, deeply aware that we are all 

on a very impending verge... of  eternity

***

Jude 1:3-4

Beloved, although I made every effort to write to you about the salvation we share,

 I felt it necessary to write and urge you to contend earnestly for the faith

 entrusted once for all to the saints. 

4For certain men have crept in among you unnoticed—

ungodly ones who were designated long ago for condemnation. 

They turn the grace of our God into a license for immorality, 

and they deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

***

 

The blessings we enjoy

The heartaches we endure

Grievances that annoy

Dreams loosed from the mind’s moor

The ups and downs we face

The fights twixt faith and fear

Are all hallmarks of time and place

And temporary, dear

Love’s holy exercise

Of hold-and-letting-go

Of glad hellos and hard goodbyes

Of retrospect’s slideshow

Of choice, for better-worse

And not all it appears

Of consequence we bless or curse

With laughter or with tears

Pleasure’s brief blitz of bliss

Suffering’s griefs and pains

All pass way; the genesis

To all that yet remains

Of everlasting gain

Or everlasting loss

These moments in the sun and rain

Are but bridges we cross

That lead away from This

Brief encounter with grace

Where soul alone transcends What Is

Of fleeting Time and Place

The fool rejects this truth

The wise take heed and pray

Because death is the living proof

Of this world’s little stay

Then, while we can, prepare

To meet Thy God, before

We step from time’s fleet thoroughfare

Into Forevermore

© Janet Martin

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.

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.

For the perishable must be clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 

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

When We Begin To See

PAD Challenge day 23: For today’s prompt, take the phrase “When (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then write the poem. 

When new day forges from dark deep

A gorgeous steppingstone

To lay beneath both sky and feet

The measure to move on

When new ways come to dis the old

And test the tried and true

With theories, daring and bold

And foreign to our view

When we begin to feel the sting

Of time’s insistent thrum

As we struggle to wear the Thing

We once felt so safe from

When we begin to see how thin

The veil that separates

Immortal soul from mortal skin

And Time from timeless gates

Then we begin to realize

The frailty of sod

And we, if we are meek and wise

Will seek the hand of God

© Janet Martin

 You have made my days a mere handbreadth; 

the span of my years is as nothing before you. 

Everyone is but a breath, 

even those who seem secure.

Psalm 39:5