This Little While We Tended

When day is done

And all its fragments garnered

Into Past’s steadfast, Ever-cast repose

Its battles won

Or lost until tomorrow

When day is done what will dusk’s gates enclose?

When grief and joy

In sudden, strange encounters

Steals our breath or laughter’s lilting zest

What epitaphs

Will engrave twilight’s tombstone

Where daily deaths of bygone ages rest?

When day is done

And all its laymen slum’bring

As This and That by eventide’s side falls

When we dismantle

High-noon’s steel-fist struggling

To rest awhile ‘neath moonlight’s silver shawl

...where pink and gold

Folds Time’s fast-fading fortune

Into a Thing that no one can undo

Will it be worth

The little While we tended

When day is done and our life is through?

© Janet Martin

Through Jesus Christ

(We sang this song and it was a glimpse of Heaven)

We gathered from different cultures, countries, customs and languages united in the One word we understood; Jesus. Oh, what a glorious worship time we had yesterday with fellow-believers from Iran, Turkey, and other various countries they moved through before arriving in Canada, some only very recently!
When we sang it felt like the roof  dissolved and heaven came down...it was Awesome!

Though mortal mercy fails

And human need despairs

Look, look, for grace, a boundless grail 

Pours through the sinner's prayers

Then let our spirits soar

And let our praises ring

Through Jesus Christ,we find the More

For our hungering

Salvation's enemy

Employs its emptiness

Look, look, One satisfies our plea

With holy happiness

Let all His Name applaud

Sin's debt has been repealed

Through Jesus Christ, the Son of God

Earth's nations can be healed

Though pious sacrament

To idols are inept

Look, look upon the Testament

Of every promise kept

...and let our song proclaim

The righteousness we craved

Through Jesus Christ, the only Name

Whereby we can be saved

Janet Martin

Still, Above it All...

 Still, like May-green's subtle weaning...

Still, beneath Time’s rushing edict

Light and darkness ebb and flow

Like green hills soft-resurrected

From the fields of ice and snow

Still, within life’s wheeling, dealing

Give and taking high and low

Like a spool of string unrav'ling

Seamless seasons come and go

Still, amidst the grieving-leaving

-letting go; love’s sweetest pain

Tireless, time’s hand is weaving

That which cannot be again

Still, like May-green’s subtle weaning

Still, like roses in June’s smile

Still, like ending’s new beginning

Spills the willingness of While

Still, above it all the Giver

Of life’s ever-ebbing vim

Draws each arrow from His quiver

Surely, surely back to Him

 ©Janet Martin

But For Today

Not for the morrow and its come-what-may

God, grant us what we need, but for today

© Janet Martin

When Things Go Right...

Good timber does not

grow with ease

The stronger the wind

The stronger the trees

Thomas S. Monson

It’s not when things go right, first-off

That we learn to fight and be strong

The stories we recount most oft

Come from those times when things go wrong

Adversity, pained, unexplained

And disappointment, is the hand

Whereby the lot of us are taught

And thereby learn to understand

When things go wrong, and we must wait

And work and trust and pray and fight

We learn how to appreciate

Those little breaks when things go right

© Janet Martin

Learning How To Pray

Trust is hard

Waiting required

And we are wired

To want It now

We pray but still

Who knows God’s will?

Or how long ‘til

We find it out?

Waiting tests

Our boasted ‘bests’

And hope’s requests

For all we say

Requires trust

A yielded Must

As God-breathed dust

Learns how to pray

© Janet Martin

O, satisfy us early with Thy mercy:

that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Ps. 90:14