After Dark

He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.

Isa.50:4 

Like a weightless waterfall

Gold pours over black

Like a faithful miracle

From hope’s bivouac

Like an ocean without shores

Dawn dissolves the deep

Unveiling earth’s corridors

Enshrouded in sleep

Like a gift from gracious God

Mercy meets its mark

Where a waking world applauds

Morning after dark

© Janet Martin

For a while the morning remained dark, then softly like a weightless waterfall...a faithful miracle! Thank-you, Jesus. (Imagine if the day stayed black, how doleful our toil!)

 Such fantastic lighting whereby to tackle to-do lists!

Given the Chance...or Given the Gift?

Straggle, shuffle, haste or lag

Empty-handed, heavy bag,

Happy, huffy, grumpy, sad

Tell me, which are you?

Morning flings its door ajar

And no matter who we are

Stumble, fumble, touch-a-star

We have life to do

Big blue sky or rainy gray

Work-work-work or pause to play, 

Weighted by time's come-what-may

Or free as a lark

Mouth of grin or fierce-some frown

Rich or poor or up or down

Stiffly starched or wrinkled gown

Day will soon be dark

Pick a flower, trample it

Hurry, scurry, loaf a bit

Supple stride or simple sit

Endure or abscond

Choose to pray or live to crave

Will we be servant or slave

Where Today is all we have?

…how will we respond?

© Janet Martin

Let's live to see

what's right in front

of you and me

and if given the chance

Let's not forget how to sing

or dance

...even in the rain 

yesterday Victoria, her friend and I watched this movie:)
Have you been singin' in the rain lately?

In Life To Come...

God is not dead, come join the song that hope alone can sing

For His name is Emmanuel; God with us, Christ the King

And no one can afford to miss this gift, Jesus, He came

So we can be saved from our sin by power through His Name

Glad legions in the sky declared the birth of Christ the Lord

The shepherds sped to Bethlehem to see what they had heard

We, without seeing yet believe; believe that we will see

In life to come, the full proof of the love that sets us free

For God so loved the world He gave His one and only Son

To triumph over sin’s curse, death; love wept, Thy will be done

Surrendering; what awful price precipitated Hope

As He became the sacrifice, and we heirs to His home

God is not dead; come join the song that first the shepherds heard

‘For unto you is born this day a Saviour, Christ, the Lord’

Ah, no one can afford to miss this gift of hope and love

Where we, without seeing believe what life in death will prove

© Janet Martin

Wishing you a singing Sunday!

The Wood Is Such a Lovely Place...

The wood is such a lovely place

Apart from Time’s progressive race

With green of moss and limbs that toss

Their loss of life like layered lace

The wood is such a lovely deep

A temple beneath blue-sky keep

Nature depletes and then repeats

Its circuit of bud, bloom and sleep

The wood is like a garden plot

Of bracken and forget-me-not

With log to sit and rest a bit

To talk to God with naught but thought

The wood is happy like a child

A home to creatures of the wild

A wind-song, leaf-song, bird-song berth

Its timberland heaven on earth

The wood is such a lovely peace

Cedar of scent and pine-bough heath

Where we should pause often because

It reminds us to stop and breathe

© Janet Martin

December Dusk...

Dusk's vivid colors caught my eye while I was cleaning the upstairs before supper.

(We are blessed with beautiful, autumn-like weather here...gorgeous, unless, like Victoria you are pl-e-e-e-a-ding and hoping for snow:)

Gold ravishes the countryside

Prelude to blue nocturnal tide

Where shadows reach, lanky and gray

Before night washes them away

The barge that bore the afternoon

Is moored beneath a breath of moon

How friendly is the dying day

A rushing, hushing interplay

Subtle, dusk’s deeper shades begin

Like wave-swells when the tide comes in

Soundless its surge splurges until

It swallows up the field and hill

...and suddenly the earth is bare

Wrapped in a cloth of velvet air

Where star-gazers with pensive sighs

Ponder the haste of Time’s demise

© Janet Martin