Well-armed Stranger

Now yesterday has etched its shadow soft upon a street

It wanders through a wonderland where grief and joy compete

Moments that no one can exhume like scattered petals lie

Silk remnant of Time’s fullest bloom asleep beneath the sky

And new upon the orbit of untried and untrod way

Thus we embark; the dark relents emerging as Today

We’ve never met before and yet mindless we recognize

Your gentle chuckle like old folklore teasing far-off skies

Familiar yet stranger striding without backward glance

Over  highlighted agonies in ease and confidence

Ah, Maestro of moments, soon you set to memory

Those clandestine collections that only the mind can see

My, my, but you’re a heart-throb shedding colors to the dust

Rendering seeds of happiness; harvest is up to us

Suffused with free surprises you unfold from formless deep

To spill gold light in footsteps where your predecessors sleep

And where you etched your shadow soft upon thought’s palisade

You come, armed from somewhere aloft with mem’ries yet unmade

© Janet Martin

Ah, Moment

 (This RED leaf caught my eye while I was biking tonight...)

Ah moment, who can measure thee, or who can weigh thy worth?

Thy offspring seeps into the air like raindrops to the earth

And only in thy aftermath do we thy impact grasp

A little leaf of instant-ever soldered gasp by gasp

Ah moment, who can conquer thee or by thee be unscathed

Monarch; thy empire centuries that rise and fall away

Yet ever from thy phantom fount spill legions none can clutch

To thread with silver, raven locks while melting ‘neath our touch

Ah moment, who can outrun thee, mute twinkle in the eye

And who can ever greater be than thee of half-spent sigh?

Thou undefined yet unsurpassed of wraith-periphery

Minute, yet I must ask is any mightier than thee?

© Janet Martin

 ...in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 1 Cor. 15:52

 

Prayer for Life

Lord, make us brave

And not enslaved

To chains of fear and doubt

Help us to love

And thereby prove

What You are all about

Lord, teach this dust

To hope and trust

Not in power of sight

But what we know

You promised so

We are equipped to fight

Lord, make life’s care

A living prayer

Of contrite spirit, then

Pray we may shine

The glory thine

Forevermore,

Amen

© Janet Martin

NOT on Vacation

Tens of thousands of Christians are among the more than 1.2 million people forced to flee for their lives in Iraq by the brutally violent militant group, Islamic State. The UN recently designated the situation a Level Three Emergency—the most severe possible rating for a humanitarian disaster.
We’re reaching out with the love of Christ to those who’ve run from Islamic State’s “convert-to-our-version-of-Islam-or-die” threats, and who desperately need food, shelter, water, and medical care.
Hundreds of thousands have sought refuge in the Kurdistan region, where we have a field office and where churches in the Kurdish capital of Erbil are partnering with us in welcoming and caring for refugees. We’ve set up hundreds of tents for displaced families and provided over 14,000 people with food. We’ve also distributed mattresses, cribs, baby clothes, shoes, pillows, and Bibles.
Your financial support and prayers are urgently needed for us to continue ministering in Jesus’ Name to Iraq’s suffering families. Please give generously today by phoning 1-800-663-6500 or clicking this button:

They are not taking a break
from full-time jobs,
three square meals a day

This is not
a wilderness' getaway'
or 'roughing it' play

No 'break-from-our-comfort-zone
See-if-we-can-do-it'

This is an 'only-by-the-grace-of God
-and His-people
will we get through it'

This is our call to prayer-and-share
with those greatly hurting
Come, all who care; we are called to bear
one another's burdens

A call to help persecuted Christians in Iraq just landed in my in-box. We have no excuses! by the click of a button we can help and share and bear their burden!

Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. Gal 6:2

Autumn-kindled

The field that yielded farmer-gold

Is stripped; dawn lifts its latch

We spill into summer’s frail hold

Ere autumn strikes its match

The lawn’s deep-cool pooled luxury

Is touched by trace of tears

With what once was and what must be

Of leaf-song balladeers

The garden bares its fare; we smile

While that fast-talking clock

Seems bent upon the grinning guile

Of petals on the walk

Into dawn’s honeyed yawn we run,

Where summer’s spangled lea

Rolls like a wave beneath the sun

Toward eternity

For every bloom in earth’s ball-room

And early green of youth

Is caught up in Time’s spinning loom

Of season-woven truth

And where we staggered infant-like

Then swaggered with pretense

We pause because the clock soon strikes

In deft deliverance

…and we accept that we, inept

At matters of good-bye

Must learn to dance; nothing withheld

Autumn leans on the sky

© Janet Martin

 This wheat-field is balled up and gone, as are most in the area .

  I noticed burgundy edges on a deep green maple tree.

What We See

 "I have always maintained that if you look closely enough you can see the wind; the dim-hardly-made-out, fine debris fleeing high in the air". Stewart Edward White

Then fling away, oh blinding scales

 And let me see what sight unveils

For I would like to learn to see

The 'what is right in front of me'

Ah, see time’s colors; how they splay

While shaping miracles from clay

Dare I to pass without a glance

Where a wide world of wonders dance?

Forbid it that I serve a lord

Bent on dull dollars for reward

Then forgetting to truly see

The 'what is right in front of me'

Gift-wrapped beauty in rich supply

Waits, waits to awe the Seeing Eye

Nature, a painter with no brush

Does not wait long, nor does she rush

For no stage, page, platform or screen

Offers to us such relished scene

As that long second look we take

Across dusk’s fading, jaded brake

Thus, here and now, house, field or street

God gives to all a front row seat

Oh, then let us never forget

That what we see is what we get

© Janet Martin