Of Imagination and Temptation

   

(click on this image for a must-hear message!)

Mankind’s thought super-power

Is imagination

Prone to both good or evil

For with it comes temptation

How subtle is deception

This testing of our will

Amplifies weakness or brute strength

To fight for good or ill

How can we battle purely

What thought perceives as ‘nice’?

Prayer is our single sure defense

Against temptation’s vice

For thought, the lone precursor

To everything we do

Proves through our action who we serve

In places hid from view

...and mankind’s super-power

Is imagination

Thought is the doorway whereby we

Are led into temptation

 How can we guard the barracks

Immune to force of limb?

The Word of God is faultless

and fills our thoughts with Him

© Janet Martin

What a great undertaking imagination is...

soon it reveals its colors in wisdom or foolishness

Imagination is a great thing. Every astonishing invention was the fruit of someone’s imagination, but imagination is also the first-fruit of temptation!

 No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. 1 Cor. 10:13

By The Return of Flowers

Sometimes it seems we mark the years by these fine friends of ours

How sweet it is when re-appears the fellowship of flowers

Those empty vases tucked away in winter hiding places

Are filled with lupine, peony and other darling faces

Now laughing down the dusty lane of ordinary meadows

Hails Queen Ann’s Lace, daisy, flea-bane to tease commonplace shadows

The garden sings with iris plume and lily-bloom companions

The hummingbird and honey-bee drink deep from fragrant fountains

Our winter-want is satisfied in purples, pinks and yellows

We stroll or linger long beside these fine and friendly fellows

For we know farewell trembles even in life’s fullest hour

And we cannot afford to miss the friendship of its flower

The new becomes the old too soon; youth dons Time’s sweeter sorrow

How easily an afternoon surrenders to tomorrow

…as swift a season disappears in silent petal-showers

And ever still we chart the years by the return of flowers

© Janet Martin

Often I find myself comparing years to flowers, such as that year the so-and-so was blooming when…

I took your birthday picture and the lilacs were blooming already, etc…

Some years the peonies bloom early in June (at my daughter’s birthday) and other years they make great year-end teacher-gifts!

Victoria remarked recently that she misses our porchulaca flowers. They came up on their own for a few years after one year of planting but somehow the other year they didn't re-seed. We miss flowers a little like friends who have passed beyond our reach...

Our 'Yes-agains'

...a glimpse of my 'yes-agains' :)

What are you going to do tomorrow, hubby asked last night when he called, and I told him I’d really like to get caught up on laundry if the weather is nice and hoe the garden and clean the house a little more thoroughly. Again?  he asked and I said’ yes, again’... 

Isn’t everyone’s lives made up of ‘yes-agains?’ He drives to Green Bay, Wisconsin or New Jersey…again; most people go to work again, What a gift those ‘yes-agains’ are!

Yes, yes-again God you have lent

From midnight’s dark, Time, morning-bent

Grace re-implores with gifted ‘whens’

To employ our ‘yes-agains’

For this day, swift and soon forsook

Pens a new page in our life-book

Oh, not for naught do we embark

From this primed port of waning dark

For Past is more than moments bared

Or more than gathered hours shared

We write with far, far-reaching pens

Where God stores our ‘yes-agains’

Yes, yes-again we pray ‘Lord keep’

Yes, yes-again we work, laugh, weep

Yes, yes-again we want, wish, wait

Scrub, sweep and sing; somewhere a Gate

Swings on hinges we cannot hear

When it shuts This will disappear

Holy, sacred and awesome charge

As ‘yes-agains’ fill up our barge

..as Faithfulness in minute scale

Falls in mute ‘yes-again’ regale

Lord, grant us then each day that we

Employ our ‘yes-agains’ for Thee

© Janet Martin

 Isaiah 57:15
For this is what the high and exalted One says-- he who lives forever, whose name is holy: "I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.

Hallelujah, through Him we can carry on in our yes-agains!

Always on the Hunt

Where do you find them and how? someone asked me and suddenly I wondered too!

How do I find you and where do you hide

I’ve glimpsed you on skylines and hushed countryside

Yesterday briefly I touched you and heard

Fragments of melody yet void of word

… I searched for, longed for you, but then alas

Lost you somewhere on June’s sun-dappled grass

I felt you closer like love’s ‘almost kiss’

Where daylight fell to dusk’s flaming abyss

But as I reached to trace your whisper, then

You fled to where none can trespass with pen

Why do you stay in that ‘next-to-me’ place?

Sighing in wind-song and teasing embrace

You break my will then restore it anew

Shaping, re-shaping my notions of you

Always in season, vague yet virile taunt

Keening my senses and stirring my want

Somewhere within me and out there you roam

Until I find you, dear elusive poem

© Janet Martin

Lest We Miss the Music

May life never be so loud

We miss the music

Or so consuming

We lose its romance

May love never be so common

We miss its miracle

Or so testing

We forget to dance

Look, look all around

For there is more

than we often

take time to see

May life never be so busy

…we miss its poetry

© Janet Martin