In This Breathing Space of Grace...

There’s room

For love

and grief

and joy

and hurt

And greed

and grace,

And fuss

And hope

and ‘nope’

And smiles

and need

and improvement

In all of us

© Janet Martin

 “Therefore we do not lose heart.
Even though our outward man is perishing,
yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.”

2 Cor.4:16

Choose This Day...

We have a choice to make

This world is plagued with strife

And we must choose Whom we will serve

As we journey through life

No one forces the heart

Love offers man free will

With which to choose Whom we will serve

Before the corpse lies still

God is the heart’s witness

He hears its ‘yes’ or ‘no’

…no matter Whom we choose to serve

‘Tis by His grace we go

…and someday face to face

With He who lends this choice

No matter Whom we choose to serve

Each one will hear His voice

© Janet Martin

Inspired by this post.

To deny God does not change Him

To deny truth does not change it

To deny God does not change Him 

 But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” 

Joshua 24:15

God Can

I was just  listening to this song; I Will Look Up

 sent to the WBC congregation to prepare our hearts for the week-end services.

Doesn’t it make you ever-so-thankful that...

God Can...

No matter how hopeless

Times and days may seem to man

God’s Omnipotence is changeless

He can

…do what man deems impossible

Nothing is to He

Who holds yesterday, today, tomorrow

In Love’s Supremacy

© Janet Martin

  For nothing is impossible with God." Luke 1:37

...oh, for a heart to fully rely
On God,
without doubt's murmured, 'why?' 

Forward...

 

God opens dawn's door with holy fire to our Forward-facing flight...

When reflecting on life I am so thankful we cannot return, (even if there are times and places we miss)

we only, always move forward, living not in what will be or what was, but What Is!

I hope your Saturday and weekend grants awareness of God's Grandeur...

Blessings:) 

(I have a few teen-age male 'bakers' about to take over my kitchen for a while. I better ske-daddle!

They are participating in a Men's Dessert Challenge our church is hosting tonight as part of our fall kick-off celebrations.)

The waking hour broods above

Time's over, gone-and-done

Its carriage primed to carry us

Forward. None can return

To grovel or gloat in what was

This forward-facing flight

 Adheres to Eden's changeless laws

Of morning, noon and night

 Come, all aboard and on and up

Time's one-way thoroughfare

Proceeds from Mercy's lenient cup

And who of us will dare

To challenge He who ordains it?

And who is left behind?

Not one. Life's forward-faced frigate

Cuts virgin swathes through Time 

 ...where all that we have said and done

Is scattered in its wake

This Chariot of Fire, love

Denudes with Past, our Take

And none can erase or replace

One moment-drop. A flood 

From lips and finger-tips; thus grace

 Moves forward. God is good

Janet Martin~

God's grandeur of grace moves us forward with holy, holy, holy...awe!

Here is the poem from the photo above...

God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Lest We Forget The Faith of Our Fathers (for North America)

Here, on the self-same sod that lured forefathers from afar

To brave the mighty sea that rose between borders, we are

The evidence of blessing sprawls across the nation wide

We till the self-same sod where generations lived and died

And soon, for no one is immune, we too will lie beneath

This place of goldenrod in bloom and zephyr-tousled heath

But now we are, armed with the only thing of any worth

A new Today; to leave a little labor on its girth

Thus we, before our blood and bones pervades this very dust

Should view its undertaking as an offering of Trust

And never, for a moment dare to entertain the thought

That we are now entitled to more than forefathers sought

Here, on the self-same sod they craved the very things we do

Freedom and family, a little house to come home to

And many, on the eventide by light of candle lit

Would open up the Word of God and read and pray a bit

Knowing that by His grace alone they toil and till and trod

Oh, pray we are as faithful as they, on this self-same sod

© Janet Martin

 

Remembering 9/11

Fall-fever

...here are a few frames that sparked fall-fever symtoms;)

It seeps into green-coppice art

Tousles its diadem

It interrupts the trepid heart

That clings to summer’s hem

It spirals on emboldened breeze

And golden walnut leaf

It frolics where new minstrels tease

The summer-lover’s grief

It hides inside sun-sweetened pears

And drips from nature’s lip

To bronze-frond fence-line thoroughfares

Where summer lost its grip

It slips between the song and dance

Of what was and will be

And startles Farewell’s reluctance

With giddy chivalry

It kisses orchard avenues

It rankles with Intent

To those inclined to sing the blues

Of summer-gone lament

It mothers Thought and Fond Feeling

And cradles to its cheek

Fragmented flowers, soft-stealing

Summer; its mesh is weak  

It rouses echoes from deep sleep

Of childhood’s long ago

And wraps its subject in a sweep

Of summer’s afterglow

© Janet Martin