This Mad Embrace...

This steal-our-breath where life and death are juxtaposed, aligned

Rewards us and dismays us with its gifts cruel and kind

These four-season arrangements that estrange yet coalesce

While hours wring earth’s flowers with both hurt and happiness

This tie that binds while loosening with holy ticks and tocks

The gossamer tether of holding hands and watching clocks

Where running to and fro, clasping and letting go becomes

A collection of destinies that keens senses and numbs

…with nothing more than kisses where daylight dismisses stars

And dawn’s new spawn of wishes draws upon our heart of hearts

Delight and discontentment while this flight of left-foot-right

Drains more than sunset skylines in its raving appetite

This reading books and wading brooks and meeting looks and smiles
This birthday cake and blue lake-ache, this heartbreak that beguiles
Us to another come-what-may splayed gold upon the east
While we with trembling boldness tread the hemline of its feast

This being-doing-seeing-trusting-ruing what is not

This Thing that sings and weeps, vexes and perplexes man’s thought

This beg-and borrow, common sorrow cup that overflows

With laughter of a baby and Perfection of a rose

This place of grace that hinges us in space to God’s full care

And traces Hope where we would grope in uttermost despair

This minuscule allotment of salvation’s joy and strife

Is The Appointment before Evermore that we call life

© Janet Martin

We've enjoyed a week of  dawn's sun-gold skylines after what felt like an endless routine of gray...

here's to another and wishing you every-kind-of-Wonderful-Saturday.

 ...don't you love Spring's when-every-leaf-is-a-flower stage?!

A Mother Is Forever

Quote by Laura Ingalls Wilder

She cups within Her bearing

Life’s loveliest of charms

Birthed in the gentle caring

Of babies in her arms

She learns sacred thanksgiving

Love’s stunning bittersweet

Taught in the course of living

By children at her feet

Her prayers could fill an ocean

A deep, unscripted cry

That God will watch her children

As they learn how to fly

She grafts to precious laughter

A trove of tender tears

Knowing how soon the After

Seals childhood’s precious years

Therefore, she serves with honor

Her call to Motherhood

A crown God placed upon her

And uttered, ‘it is good’

This hardest undertaking

Of discipline and grace

Rewards her when her children

Arise and call her Blessed

She knows heartstrings won’t sever

Wherever they may be

A mother is forever

Her love, eternity

© Janet Martin

She looks well to the ways of her household, And does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her;

Prov.31:27-28

Mom-stuff

We don’t need much, really

A hug to heal heartaches

And to feel forgiveness

When we make mistakes

We don’t want much, really

But oh, we do confess

We often hunger dearly

For our children’s happiness

We don't need big presents

But this one thing we do

Every now and then we need

To hear 'Mom, I love you'

© Janet Martin

Until Heaven

I do all this for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way as to take the prize. Everyone who competes in the games trains with strict discipline. They do it for a crown that is perishable, but we do it for a crown that is imperishable.…

1 Cor. 9:24

Life’s flesh-and-blood appointments can near-drain the spirit dry

Its day-to-day anointing of God’s grace is filled with ‘why?’

Yet God (so rich in mercy) needs no reason to explain

But implores us to trust Him until Heaven makes it plain

No, not for naught but for this; God, who made us, makes a way

Though doubt and fear may seek to commandeer our day-to-day

Our God is greater than the greatest test to mortal might

And He pleads that we trust Him until Heaven becomes sight

No eye has seen nor ear has heard the wonder that waits where

He waits to gather close to Him those who know Him through prayer

But then, when faith becomes our Sight, His answer will amaze

Thus God implores we trust Him until Heaven fills our gaze

© Janet Martin

Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of the Prize when we focus not on love's Who but its Whys…

What We Know

 

Yon skies are over-flowing with the glowing of new day

And you and I, not knowing what waits in its come-what-may

Are never at the mercy of its circumstance alone

But ever in the faithful Keep of He who brings us dawn

He sets upon the heart a guard lest fear should paralyze

The Hope in us when life is hard and overcome with sighs

He never will forsake us, we, the darlings of His care

Are ever in the Able Hands of He who rules the air

Rejoice, The Voice of He who first uttered Time into space

And spoke all into being, but redemption, grants us grace

And though we never know what we may face, ah, this is sure

The One True God goes with us and through Him we can endure

How small man’s acumen to ken and understand His way

How vast The Everlasting God who begets day-to-day

Where, though we know time may not show the ‘why’ of its travail

His love whereby we go, we know, will never, ever fail

© Janet Martin

I Know Whom I Have Believed

David’s Prayer

 David praised the Lord in the presence of the whole assembly, saying,

“Praise be to you, Lord,
    the God of our father Israel,
    from everlasting to everlasting. 

 Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power
    and the glory and the majesty and the splendor,
    for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
Yours, Lord, is the kingdom;
    you are exalted as head over all. 

 Wealth and honor come from you;
    you are the ruler of all things.
In your hands are strength and power
    to exalt and give strength to all. 

 Now, our God, we give you thanks,
    and praise your glorious name.

1 Chron. 29:10-13