Fitness Test

How does life shape you?

In its hurdles and hurt

Do we get back up

Or languish in the dirt?

How do we respond

To its keening drill?

Do we carry on

Letting love mold our will?

Grace is deliverance

And Mercy is free

Lean on its Giver

With humility

The teacher of Time

Wields a winnowing knife

Ever the shaper

Of this little life

Then, count its kind blessing

And oh, never cease

For beyond the testing

Is love’s masterpiece

© Janet Martin

...or cookies!:) 

 

 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. Heb. 10:23

Of Preludes and Parting

 

Morning, you murmur on midnight’s mute hem

Threading the skyline in whispers red-gold

Soon you will crown noon’s azure diadem

Ere, dusk surrenders its swoon to your hold

Giver and taker of summer’s high note

Maestro of anthems that tongue cannot sing

You place you music in nature’s glad throat

While we loiter long in its rhythm and swing

For beneath our laughter we know full well

This is the prelude to summer’s farewell

Wild with extravagance you preen the rill

Sketching the etching of pristine tree-top

Softly you spill silhouettes to the hill

Muting earth’s palette in heaven’s backdrop

Tempest of greeting and parting unite

Up from the east, down from north, west and south

Darkness dissolves in your tremor of light

Polestar of summer melting in your mouth

We cannot keep you; your distraction swells

In passionate prelude to fondest farewells

Summer; God’s love-song to soften the miles

Leading to autumn and winter’s duress

Kindly the visage of Providence smiles

There are no seasons to His tenderness

Over the valley in shimmers of mist

He strikes the timbrel of this first-last day

We cannot leave it crumpled and half-kissed

Thus we toss our silent sorrow away

This is the hour of living full well

Tasting the prelude to summer’s farewell

© Janet Martin

This morning parting is on my mind...parting of a favorite month and parting of friends that fly back to Africa tomorrow.

Every page of middle-age

is turning way too fast

Live, laugh, love, we know the truth

Summer will soon be past!

On Coveting and Contentment

It does not do us any good

To covet someone else’s lot

So each of us should give God thanks

And do the best with what we’ve got

To covet someone else lot

Is but to waste our gifted hours

If we look on another’s plot

We sadly miss our own sweet flowers

So each of us should give God thanks

For what we have; lest we despair

And thus neglect to humbly give

The glory to His loving care

…and do the best with what we’ve got

It is our duty, is it not?

How sad to miss life’s joy because

We covet someone else’s lot

© Janet Martin

Between the Plume of Dogwood Bloom

Recently someone waited in our driveway for help to change a flat tire...she admired the view of rolling countryside. Me too! I never tire of it and am 'wowed' constantly by God's handiwork in every season.

Between the plume of dogwood bloom

And autumn’s laden bower

We linger in the candid grin

Of summer’s precious hour

Betwixt the scrim of blushing limb

In springtime’s glad awaking

And orchard bent; heaven has sent

Summer, free for its taking

She does not charge the world at large

For sun-beam dappled grasses

Nor asks a price for blue-sky slice

Or wind-song as it passes

Freely she flings her offerings

Of roses, sunset, showers

Where green and gold on hills unfold

To roadsides filled with flowers

Her melody is fair and free

How soft those sweet caresses

Between the plume of dogwood bloom

And autumn’s flaming tresses

© Janet Martin

Sweet, sweet July
Oh, tell me why
You slip so swiftly
To the sky...

Lovely Love

Love is not a recreational pastime

It stands, faithfully through life’s thick and its thin

Love is a mercy much deeper than laughter

Or beauty that grazes our bindings of skin

Love is relinquishment of self-desire

Bending of knee and re-bowing of will

Love is the traveler of second-mile journeys

Honing our meekness with its keening drill

Love plants its blossoms in suffering’s dark windows

It does not covet lime-light or applause

Knowing that God is its ultimate witness

Love does not grumble or kick at life’s flaws

Love is a splendor of infinite wonder

It does not seek adulation or boast

Yet in the end it is Love; Gift and Giver

That never ceases to astonish us most

© Janet Martin

For my neighbor Laurene who simply spreads love wherever she goes. God bless you, Laurene.

These Seemingly Nothings

It is good, these seemingly nothings

Talking of weather or what yet might be

Chatting of recipes, gardens and children

Painting a picture in thought’s memory

It is precious, life seemingly nothings

Oh what a blessing, beneath summer’s tree

To linger a moment where the sun in shining

And talk of these ‘nothings’ while stirring our tea

God bless the hours of ‘seemingly nothings’

These are the neutrals in life’s tapestry

Camouflaged colors we take for-granted

Until greater sorrows jolt their memory

It is love, these seemingly nothings

…Time’s gentle stitches binding joy and strife

‘Seemingly nothings’ of chuckle and chatter

Helping us bear bigger burdens of life

Treasure the measure of ‘seemingly nothings’

…modest imbuement of mercy’s caress

Nibble of muffin and vase of wild daisies

‘Seemingly nothings’ of God’s tenderness

© Janet Martin

It feels so good to feel good! Victoria and I spent 24 hrs sharing blankets and

 pepto-bismal. Today a neighbor popped by within minutes after she heard we were a little ‘under the weather’ She brought muffins, a cheery smile and we chatted for a while. I realized that I am way too guilty of taking one of life’s greatest blessings too for granted! There really are no ‘nothings’ in life…and I told my neighbor that I thought of her mother, an invalid, when I was sick. My heart goes out to those who suffer every day!  

Of July's Fading Fringes

Hold me, I beg in your kind, azure gaze

Dance to a warm willow-vesper

Nurture my mind with abandonment’s blaze

Sweeten my mouth with your whisper

Cradle me where we will seal our last kiss

Gather me in farewell’s hunger

Torture me tenderly in parting’s bliss

Tarry until I am younger

You know that I will not shackle the gate

I know that you must be leaving

Passion and sorrow; love’s juxtaposed weight

Mingle in bittersweet grieving

I beg you to hold me, sweet, sanguine July

But moments do not pause or linger

Caught in a vortex of wide-open sky

You vanish on my outstretched fingers…

© Janet Martin

There’s a key change in the winds that play

Falling from lilt to sigh

Dripping from tendrils of mid-day

In preeminence of good-bye

Tomorrow it may croon and swell

Over summer’s high-noon

Today it lingers in farewell

Of July; leaving way too soon

Long we a-wait its broad, blue-sky candor

Mid-summer’s easy kin-ship

Somewhere within Time’s wild-flower splendor

Over bronze fringes it slips

There is a key change in the late afternoon

It trickles from lintels of musk

Pooling in mouths of day-lily blooms

Disappearing into the dusk…

Solemn, the orchestra of cricket-cheeping

Ushers her over a floor

Of stubble and clover; while we are sleeping

July will be no more…

© Janet Martin

Sharing a few from a year ago...just getting over a bout of flu;(

Gift of Grace

Between the paths that lie behind

And every path untrodden

Exists the present; here we find

A thing sacred, important

The path behind can’t be retraced

The future is thought-vision

The present is a gift of grace

Worthy of our ambition

We cannot travel yesterday

Or tread tomorrow’s nothing

The worth of life is in Today

A gracious gift of loving

Between the paths of ‘Hope’ and ‘Had’

We bear an exhortation

The present pleads on our behalf

With purposed expectation

And soon the moments it has wrought

Will be life-lesson’s story

Embrace this mercy-gift from God

And use it to His glory

© Janet Martin