Want Is Like A Wagon...

Want is like a wagon that we heap with wish and whim

Hope is like a hunger that we know will lead to Him

Want is like a weight we carry without joy or peace

Hope is like the wings that bear us to where Want will cease

Want enslaves us with the cravings that chain us to loss

Hope makes servants of those willing to suffer love’s cross

Want rivals twixt need and greed, its pleading to fulfill

Hope is always humbly fixed and yielded to God’s will

© Janet Martin

1 Tim.6:3-10

NIV

These are the things you are to teach and insist on. If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, they are conceited and understand nothing. They have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

On Moment-metered May and Must

PAD Challenge day 29: For today’s prompt, write a metric poem.

I love when life is a healthy balance of 'ought' and 'want'... all 'ought' is no fun, all 'want' is no good!

The thought of what I ought to do is tugging at my hand

The taunt of what I want to do is tugging at my heart

The place where dusk chased day away is bright-eyed once again

With May and Must and other love-entrusted works of art

Where tick-tock meter of the clock, since Time began will seal

The pictures tinctured with our touch, on Past’s elusive reel

Thus, between ‘ought’ and ‘want’ I wrest

Where voice of choice will soon attest

© Janet Martin  

Happy, healthy Saturday to you!

Until Want Is Filled

 I know I've shared this song before but its worth a second listen:)

If you want to be filled with awe and admonition, page through the Psalms and count how many chapters begin with the reminder to us to sing and praise God!

When wish leaves love’s laughter spent

It is time to be content

Wishing drains the heart of hymn

Wastes the hour waned of vim

When we mistake want for need

And the voice of envy heed

We will miss Blessing’s buffet

Blinded by want’s wishing way

When the happiness we crave

Seems lacking in what we have

We should look with longer glance

Until want is stilled

And filled with humble thanks

© Janet Martin

Inspired, in part by this;
Contentment is Knowing the Difference...

Greatest Want of All

 What, in this very moment is your greatest Want? 

Success? a house? Beauty?

Athletic body? freedom? health? wealth? fame?

world peace? a good meal?...the list of wants is endless...

Last week I mentioned my Grandmother who was a storehouse of quotes, proverbs and wisdom. I remember her repeating this one from the Bible when we wished for things...

 But godliness with contentment is great gain.

1 Tim.6:6

We want, oh. how we often want what lies beyond our reach

And yet the Want of it stirs us toward what waits to be

Then oft in the soft rush of years, while tears and laughter teach

We learn to Want with wiser wish and lesser fantasy

The Wants of daily strife are part of human life, it seems

Some hound the groping hand while others spur the heart to hope

This world is a buffet of great temptation and daydreams

As what we feed the mind becomes the means whereby we cope

Want, when honed by a Higher Call can lead to achievement

But oft by foolish Want we stray and oft by it we fall

Oh, pray that in its crash-course of full-force relinquishment

Heaven becomes our heart’s desire and greatest Want of all

© Janet Martin

Some C.S.Lewis quotes addressing our Wants...

 “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
― C.S. Lewis

 “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses

 “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened. ”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

 “Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
—C.S. Lewis

Filling Want's Pockets

Now, let’s be done with the vain mongering

Of fear and doubt, of greed and despair

Time, like a river that falls through the air

To our outstretched arms, stirs a hungering

For its gentler beauties that cannot be owned

Or stolen by those who are thirsty for things

We all would feel like the richest of kings

Fear, doubt, despair would be softly dethroned

If in-between toil’s quotidian rod

We would determine to follow our feet

Into dusk's lane-way or mid-meadow street

Eager for nothing but cadence of sod

Time is so eager to shuck harvest's sheaf

Tucking to nothing each bud-let and leaf

Now, let’s be done with oppression of guilt

Once and for all our dear Savior died

Knowing that we were sinful, cursed with pride

Over Time’s eons Love’s redemption spilt

And we should have time now, for nothing but Love

Oh, who can say, I have no need of it?

And Time never pauses so we must, to sit

Beneath the awning of heaven above

Tilting our faces, up, up, feel the kiss

Of autumnal farewell, bold, bully-blue

Life’s best of things are not uncommon, new

But ageless and free as lost Eden’s first bliss

Earth’s Gilead suffers long ‘neath our haste

We should slow down and remember to taste

Oh, taste and see that the Lord God is good

Pity the one who despises the truth

Lavishing venom of lust; vile, uncouth

Over a void of Love misunderstood

Now, let’s be done with our anger and hate

Render them, down on an altar of grass

Kneel where the whisper of season-songs pass

Beneath atonement from heavenly gate

Soon Time will solve our quibble and quarrel

Life is too short to be hobbled by things

We should be awed by nature’s offerings

Silver of dew-gem on jade petal-pearl 

Wealth spilling from every seed, bud and limb

Filling want’s pockets with wonders of Him

© Janet Martin

Intangible Touch

I have been kissed

Not of lips

I have been touched

Not of skin

And I have felt those finger-tips

Ravage, caress

A world within

***

The utterance of wordless thought
Traverses eons obscurely
Yet keens the pen, jot upon jot
Touching the page in poetry

***

To quell the trembling of its touch
Would be to still the surging sea
Or quench the intangible rush
Rousing the want of life in me

***

Yes, I have been kissed
Not of lips
And I have been touched
Not of skin
The climax of a moment
Spills in heart-beats
Whisper-thin
 

J~

It Seems...

Darling,

Are we the only ones

Apart tonight?

Darkness; it seems to amplify

Desire’s appetite

Oh, darling

I know I tell you

We are together far apart

But tonight it seems

I miss you

And I cannot

Deceive

My heart

Longing; it seems to conceive

Proportions of its own

And tonight it is not enough

To be together

All alone

For tonight I need to touch you

Yet, what is touch in the end?

But skin against skin; without you

Love, loss and longing blend

And perhaps all I really need

Is the junction of our thought

Brushing softly, tenderly

Over all it seems, is not

While I repeat

Dull poetry into the frozen air

Because it seems

That I am here

And you, well you

Are

There

But, darling

It seems grievously
Inadequate

This thought

Of

Blue

Sometimes it seems

Darkness ignites

My

Want

Of

You

J~

Universal Want

Some say they simply cannot tell

The words to spell their wants

From voids within they claw the air

While desperate yearning taunts

And while they scan the mindless sea

Or search the stars above

The hunger in their bosom weeps

For this; we all want love

A hand to hold at eventide

Whilst sunset splendor bleeds

A soul-mate in which to confide

Our tender ‘wants, and needs

There is no man too rich or poor

Or unworthy enough

To be fulfilled without its pow’r

…oh, we all need love

The new-born babe, the little child

The adolescent; youth

Young woman, man, we all desire

The essence of this truth

In middle age or silver-crowned

To ‘be’ is not enough

We are not soulless reeds windblown

Therefore, we all need love

Oh love, essential mystery

Its well-spring not of men

Intangible, this entity

A spurring to the end

Of gold and blood-stained filament

Creator-breathed to us

An innate ‘want’ with which we’re born

Oh, we all need love

© Janet Martin