Thursday Thoughts on This and That...

Are you enjoying the Olympics? We try to stay tuned a little during our busy summer days.

 How else can we show appreciation for the endurance and years of training these athletes have committed to.

Last night when I was biking (it was hot, my tires were a little slack, the gravel on the shoulder loose, and biking was hard!!) so I pretended I was an Olympian, determined to cross the finish-line (aka home-driveway;-)

It made me think of another finish line that Paul talks about long ago…

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

May our daily goal be to run the race with endurance so that someday we may proclaim,

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith;

in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.”

2 Tim.4:7-8

If you want to be a success,

And if you want to be a star

If you want to make a diff’rence

Then be faithful,

 Right where you are

Not in some far and future day

Not in some better this or that

Oh, if you want to be a star

Then be faithful,

Right where you’re at

***

Piety is not enough

To save the sinner’s soul

But salvation, God’s perfect love

Makes Imperfection whole

***

It is not enough to wish

Wish sires despair

Better then, to take each plea

And turn it into prayer

***

Who of us, in all this fuss

Has every answer; none

Who of us does not need trust

In He whose will is done?

Who of us can say our way

Is better then, than His?

Who of us midst all this fuss

Remembers this; God IS

***

Thank-you God, for morning

And for noon and night

Thank-you that we do not know

What waits beyond our sight

Thank-you for Your promise

No matter what the plight

You do not forsake us

Morning, noon and night

***

We grow old with our habits

Thus we should be on guard

And mold our habits with great care

For they make who we are

***

Ability is like a bud

Lifted on root and stem

How hardly it could bloom, my love

If not held up by them

***

Stay the course and do not waver

Fight the fight and do not quit

Live, but not to gain man’s favor

But for God who ordained it

***

We becomes who we ought to be

Not by self-centered quest

But in God first, then others needs

Thus we become our best

© Janet Martin

Hope you have a happy Thursday. 

Here Thursday promises to be another scorcher so I better finish my Cucumber Hotdog Relish before it gets too hot...

 This mixture of cabbage, cucumber, green tomatoes and onions sat overnight. It is ready for red peppers and celery, then boiling with a sugar-vinegar syrup and sealing.

Actually, why don't I give you my mom's recipe? 

It is yummy on hotdogs, burgers, tuna sandwiches and sandwiches in general!

Hotdog Relish

8 large cucumbers or 12-16 med.

I small head of cabbage

12-18 green tomatoes depending on the size of them

8 med onions

put through course grater.

Add a handful of salt and let sit overnight.

In the morning, drain,

add 3 chopped red peppers and 1 bunch celery, chopped

Bring to boil:

2 cups vinegar

7 cups sugar

1 tsp. celery seed

1 tsp. dry mustard

1 tsp. tumeric

Add veggies. 

(make sure you have a heavy pot and stir constantly to keep it from burning)

boil 15 min. 

Put in jars and seal!

A few hours later...I forgot what a big batch this is! Recipe can be halved if this is too much.
On the other hand, this lasts for years in the fruit cellar.

To Hope's Newest Enterprise...

Dawn is a vale kissed with soft purple mist and cricket-song...

It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
    to sing praises to your name, O Most High; 

 to declare your steadfast love in the morning,
    and your faithfulness by night,

to the music of the lute and the harp,
    to the melody of the lyre.

For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
    at the works of your hands I sing for joy.

Ps.92:1-4

Soft cricket song cascades across time’s waking enterprise

The Maestro touches his baton to morning’s blushing skies

And from the throats of nature’s choristers swell notes of praise

To He who grants His grace to mankind’s learning, yearning ways

The world is like a graveyard filled with tears and years, and yet

In folds of pink upon the brink of earth Hope is reset

And we are not forgotten, no, in spite of ignorance

As He who grants His mercy plants the air with evidence

Ah, what is man that God is mindful of his needy call?

And who can understand the mind of He who knows it all?

The greedy gall of human nature ought to damn our days

Still, He who grants His goodness sets the dark of dawn ablaze

Faith is the substance of things hoped for but no one can see

We grapple with mortal weakness and mortal tendency

While the Immortal comforts and astounds this begging breed

And grants to our helplessness His Power to succeed

...where Time is like a table laden with hope’s latest feast

As much as we are able we should pray, then take and eat

While cricket song cascades across the landscape of our sighs

To He who grants His Providence to hope’s new enterprise

© Janet Martin

Ready For Then

In the past month and a bit, Death has reminded me of its nearness like never before!
My neighbor's elderly dad sits in his easy-chair waiting for her to come and pick him up to go out for groceries.
Instead Death comes and whisks him away...

My husband's co-worker's son dies (age 38) in the middle of a conversation; brain aneurysm

My sister-in-law's mother; (age 74)cancer returns and death visits four weeks after diagnosis.

My cousin's wife, a mother and new gramma (mid-forties) drowns.

I return home from her funeral yesterday, walk into the house, my daughter hands me the phone and my neighbor-friend tells me her friend just passed away (age 30-ish) due to complications from pneumonia...

On Fri. night my parent's friend, a seemingly healthy 74 year old man who just returned home from a wedding (he was the minister who performed the marriage ceremony) dies suddenly from a massive stroke.

How much we should treasure moments with loved ones.

 Take a lesson from the birds maybe?

Moments don’t sleep

They turn to days and weeks

Months into years

…and then, comes Death

In one half-breath

A lifetime disappears

Ah, talk is cheap

No one can keep

The hand of time at bay

And none knows when

Death’s final Then

Will seal life’s breath away

This little lot

Of lilting jot

Before forevermore

Is like a hill

Of days until

Death bares An Awesome Door

Moments don’t sleep

No one can keep

Death from this breath of sod

This is the day

The Lord has made

To ready us for God

© Janet Martin

 "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.

Matt.24:42

Commiting to 'I Do'

Today's Poetic Blooming form challenge is the Quintain Cascade.

 Read more about this form here.

You make me say and do some things I thought I never would

The naughty and the nice become you more than most, ‘tis true

That day when I first met you my intentions were so good

How much you’ve taught me while I thought that I was teaching you

I want to be your student, love, all of my lifetime through

You lavish me with kisses and the innocence of words

And darling, you stir me in ways like nobody else could

You are the smallest, biggest blessing in the whole wide world

My, my, when I first held you I knew love was pure and good

You make me say and do some things I thought I never would

You teach me how to linger longer while throngs thunder by

I’ve fallen quite in love with living, all because of you

And often when the day would be gray with life’s weary sigh

You startle me with laughter like nobody else can do

The naughty and the nice become you more than most, ‘tis true

Sometimes I fail you; but you are oblivious to ‘can’t’

There is no quitting, even when love is misunderstood

You put your arms around me in the middle of a rant

And hold nothing against me even though I know you could

The day when I first met you my intentions were so good

You are not cumbered with the care of what others might say

And time is of no matter; ‘will you help me find my shoe?’

‘Will you read me a story?’ Where, oh where, along the way,

Do we become too rushed to lie beneath time’s sky-high blue?

How much you’ve taught me while I thought that I was teaching you

Master, mistress of your domain, love’s biggest, smallest charge

God knows I’m quite unfit to commit to the likes of you

Yet, since we’ve met you’ve taught me to love and live, free and large

Though I am middle-age and you are only half-past two

I want to be your student, love, all of my lifetime through

© Janet Martin

To Those Who Pause Upon This Porch...

I’d like to think that when you come

Your time is not wasted, but oh,

That when you leave you’ve found a crumb

Of joy to cheer you as you go

This walk of life that we are in

Is such a comrade-needing Here

I’d like to think that when you leave

You know that you are loved, my dear

To those who pause upon this porch

I pray for you, both near and far

And smile, to know God’s love can touch

You, who and wherever you are

© Janet Martin

When I pray I don't need to know your names

Or who-where you are because God does:)

Thank-you for dropping by!