Bottomless Chalice

Image Source:  cartwheelit.wordpress.com

It does not slip softly from our shoulders

Falling like a robe to the floor

It is not like the rushing and rolling breaker

Dissolving as it touches the shore

It runs through our senses, not like wild fingers

Of wind as it ruffles the corn

Yet, disregards fences and wantonly lingers

Where thought tumbles, both keen and forlorn

Deep in the hollow of hidden eclipses

Where hope and fear coalesce

Where love holds closely and yet releases

In simultaneous caress

Here in a twisting and turbulent tide

Or still as a frozen sea

Inexplicable oceans of longing abide

Its source an abstract  mystery

We carry a chalice somewhere deep within

That nothing in this world can fill

A hunger sprouting from the seed of sin

As we bear our share of ill

As we love and laugh and trust and pray

The ache will remain until

Heaven descends to take it away

This void that earth cannot fill

© Janet Martin

He is I AM

He is the All-awesome

All-benevolent

All-compassionate

All-delivering

All-eternal

All-faithful

All-gracious

All-holy

All- incarnate

All-justifying

All-knowing

All-loving

All-mighty

All-noteworthy

All-omnipotent

All-powerful

All-quintessential

All-redeeming

All-saving

All-truthful

All-unfathomable

All- victorious

All-worthy

All-xcellent

All-Yahweh

All-zenith

God

He IS ALL in all
He IS I AM

© Janet Martin

Never Like This Again

It will never be this way again

With sentimental thought

I touch the moment I am in

I cannot curse this vapor thief

That steals while it is giving

And heals while inflicting grief

The timbre of pleasure and pain

Is love’s essence, bittersweet

As I realize it will never be like this again

Perpetual trickle of laughter and tears

Time comforts and torments

As moments become years

It will never be like this again

So I caress it tenderly

This moment I am in

© Janet Martin

I grabbed my camera to take a picture of the last morning forever, of three scholars leaving together.

With Veiled Eyes...

God’s thoughts are a mystery

We cannot explain

The reasoning of His perfect say

But someday in Heaven

All will be plain

When this world has vanished away

Life’s tribulation

Its pain and its grief

Are not absences of His grace

But, by these we long

For Heaven’s relief

And eternity’s resting place

The curse of sin

Covers the earth

With many a tortured woe

Redemption offers

Hope’s re-birth

In Calvary’s ceaseless flow

Man’s faith is tested

To be proven; refined

God’s love is oft misunderstood

In spite of our folly

He is faithful and kind

And above all; God is good

Our earth-dimmed vision

Cannot see the whole

We see; but only in part

Through a glass darkly

God sees man’s soul

And the deepest intent of the heart

God’s thoughts are a mystery

We cannot explain

His sacred and holy tears

But someday in Heaven

All will be plain

As the veil in our eyes disappears

© Janet Martin

 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.Isa. 55:8-9 NIV

God is Still Good

In spite of life’s trials

Oft misunderstood

One truth is rock-solid

God is still good

In spite of His chastening

Oft misunderstood

One truth remains

God is still good

In spite of our thanklessness

Our greed and our lust

God’s goodness abides

In Him we trust

In spite of His love

Oft misunderstood

One truth never wavers

God is still good

© Janet Martin

The Sunset Cradle...

Jasmine, demons, window, scrap, ample, montage,
Flawed, granite, trapped, whistle, domain, sunset

This old table in the west window

cradled her sunsets for nigh fifty years

A montage of memories tuned by the whistle

of a January gale trapped on the outside

suddenly arouses pictures of a surface

cluttered with quilt scraps

or potted red geraniums

or perhaps in October 

a granite bowl of gleaming apples

much to eager, rosy cheeked children's delight

Flawed realities have been perfected by the forgiveness of time

No one ever questioned its domain

there, in the west window the old table and an old chair reigned

as from its visage-point jasmine rivers crawled white in June

and demons wandered black on a night with no moon

But history’s ample lap cannot preserve it

as the auctioneer shouts…what am I bid?

Who’ll give me ten? Let me throw in a chair

Ah, yes…. That chair where…
 The bitter sweetness of sunset years washes her face

© Janet Martin

The Sunday Whirl

With Heart wide Open

Too often I do not even notice

This gift you give to me

But trample coldly on it

And I don’t thank you properly

For this miracle of beauty

I ought always to embrace

As your mercy lays before me

Another day of grace

© Janet Martin

Prayer: God, help us to see the beauty of this gift,

Not only now in the calm stillness,

but as the wrapping falls away

as glorious sunrises turn gray

Revealing deeper shades

Of what is as yet, unknown,

When we struggle and stumble
Or feel misunderstood; alone

When we are weary and worn

Let us not abuse or hold this gift

With impatience or scorn

For this gift you lay before us

Is no free-fall from above

It is a miracle, born of compassion

And bestowed in perfect love

Thank-you God

Of Things Cursed

Temptation dangles like a serpent

In an idle, slothful mind

The fruit gleams, sweet upon the tree

As to its vice we're blind

We long to reach and pluck it

Taste its sugar-coated dread

But its afterglow would haunt us

Like vile ghosts inside our head

While the thing that seemed so lovely

Is a curs-ed, empty shell

And the fruit that promised heaven

But a tragic glimpse of hell

For the well of carnal thirsting

Is a void nothing can quench

As the harvest of our tasting

Bears the fruit of consequence

© Janet Martin