Ah Death! or, The Touch That Fells The Flower...

By now most of us have heard the tragic headline news...

 ...of how retired N.B.A. star, Kobe Bryant, 41, and his daughter Gianna 

were among nine people in a helicopter that crashed near Calabasas, Calif. 

Also among the victims, a college baseball coach and his wife and daughter.

Whether Death visits publicly or privately 

We all will face its forever-ness as we come face to face with The Giver 

of this precious gift of life...

 Job 14:5
Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, 

thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass;

2 Samuel 14:14
For surely we will die and be like water poured out on the ground, which cannot be recovered. 

Yet God does not take away a life; but He devises ways 

so that the banished one may not remain estranged from Him.

It strews like ash upon the sea, the petals of the bloom

It bids us touch more tenderly the threads still in life’s loom

With sacred dread it bows the head of both sinner and saint

It cautions words still left unsaid in thought’s would-be complaint

…and suddenly the things we do demand sincerity

It wakens a more humble view of who we ought to be

Where once again we are reminded of what matters most

Lest we forget and become blinded by man’s feeble boast

It wakens an awesome awareness to time’s fragile hold

We all are subject to death’s sureness, whether young or old

Therefore, while the hour still blooms with Opportunity

Pray we prepare for what yet looms and none of us can see

The gift of life, ah, what a precious, purposed brevity

Where Time runs rife with moments closing in eternity

And who can know the hour when God’s power will patrol

The Touch that fells the flower that harbours the living soul

© Janet Martin

 Therefore take careful heed to yourselves, that you love the LORD your God.

Joshua 23:11

Oh, Fleeting This!

 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. 

What is your life? 

You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

James 4:14

Brothers, as an example of patience in affliction, 

take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.

 See how blessed we consider those who have persevered. 

You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen the outcome from the Lord. 

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy. 

James 5:10-11 

Today's reflection is inspired in part by the book of James

and this morning's Daily Bread Devotion

Oh, fleeting This; how much we miss

If we are deaf and numb and blind

To He who lends what slips and wends

From mercy’s Hands to humankind

What wasted leap of wake and sleep

If we have tasted wonder’s bliss

With heart-doors barred, stone-cold and hard

Primed with a sword and traitor’s kiss

Man’s days and years like mist appears

Its measure beyond our control

What awful dread accosts the dead

Who disregard the Deathless Soul

What empty noise composes joys

Reliant on frail circumstance

What futile plain of grief and pain

If we scorn God and cling to chance

Oh fleeting This; how much we miss

Before full horror meets its mark

As love and grace withdraws its Face

And Light gives way to endless Dark

Dearly beloved, each life approved

By He who grants its sacred lease

Pray we revere Time’s fleeting Here

Before hope's day of grace will cease

© Janet Martin

This Is Personal (No Matter Who We Are)

 No matter who we are His gift/gifts are free...

No matter who we are or where; How smart or philosophical

Or poor in what the world deems rich or true or intellectual

The common ground we share is found not in survival’s rigmarole

But in the Bible-truth by He who breathed in man a living soul

Whether we are a super-star or obscure as a grain of sand

Or activist or pacifist or fist tight-clenched or outstretched hand

We all must choose who we will serve before that final Door we brave

Because we cannot thwart the One who will escort us through the grave

The Ultimate for all of us resides beyond what we can prove

The Evidence of faith must first put on The Greatest of These; love

For who of us can boast save in what grace of God alone allowed

Therefore no matter who we are, we all stand out in Mercy’s crowd

Where God so loved the world He sent His only Son to pay sins debt

No one is righteous save through Him and only Him (lest we forget)

Foolish to bicker or quibble where Opinion may disagree

Better to pray and guard that which outlives this brief mortality

…because no matter who we are we all will stand before the Lord

To give account; no one left out, He gives both rich and poor His Word

Where Truth is universal; no one the exception to the rule

His law is love, his judgments pure, His commands grievous to the fool

My dear, the common ground we share lies beyond time’s four-season sieve

Naked we came into this world and naked everyone will leave

For flesh and blood cannot inherit that which faith in Christ reserves

When then, no matter who we are, our Soul receives what Choice deserves

© Janet Martin

 

1 Peter 1:3-5

 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! 

By His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope

 through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading,

 reserved in heaven for you, 

who through faith are shielded by God’s power 

for the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

Ah, Rush of Day...

Just imagine if there would be as much focus

on salvation for the immortal soul

as there is on climate-change...

 and the environment!

How can one fully and honourably teach on the subject 

after rejecting The Cornerstone?!

Small wonder the world is in a state of mass confusion/ignorance!

Oh! poor, poor world, scientifically smart and spiritually ignorant!

Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.

Matt.24:42

Ah, rush of day you brush away

The hours, one by one

You ope the books of slopes and brooks

With rise and set of sun

Where what we earn by what we learn

From season’s turning page

Does not unveil its total scale

But simply sets the stage

Ah, subtle sweep where sow and reap

Replenishes its charge

Where circuits surge and mutely merge

With Bygone’s bolted barge

While time sustains what time soft-drains

Future to history

Till last exhale dissolves the veil

Twixt Time and ‘ternity

Ah, tender tug where hold and hug

Turns into letting go

Where time goes by as you and I

Learn how little we know

Ah, rush of day you brush away

Tick-tock-shaped steppingstones

Until the soul reveals the whole

Undressed of skin and bones

© Janet Martin

Of What Lies Ahead...

 On the weekend something about the swiftness of Time was talked about

(the way people fast moving past the middle stage of middle age are apt to do)

and hubby remarked how it seems wise to think much more about the magnitude of
what lies ahead rather than focus on how much time has left behind 

because there is far, far more ahead than behind no matter how far back we look!

Yes. 

2 Peter 3:8-9

‘But do not forget this one thing, dear friends:
With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.
 He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish,
but everyone to come to repentance.’

 Isaiah 40:6
A voice says, "Cry out!" And I asked, "What should I cry out?"

 "All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field.

Psalm 103:14-16

 …For He knows our frame; He is mindful that we are dust.

As for man, his days are like grass— he blooms like a flower of the field;

when the wind passes over, it vanishes, and its place remembers it no more.…

Much more ahead than behind

The ash of ages spent

Is like a whisp of mist or wind

To bit-of-Being lent

A bloom that flares and fades

Then falls…to Bygone wed

As moment unto moment trades

All but what lies ahead

Where thought, with all its might

Cannot begin to grasp

What lies ahead as Soul takes flight

After this life is past

The magnitude of days

Since Time began to be

Is but a sparkle on a maze

Of brief mortality

…when weighed against A Deep

We ought to keep in mind

Where always much more lies ahead

Than all we leave behind

© Janet Martin

A few message-excerpts from the book by Catherine Marshall...
 A Man Called Peter 

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