Heaven's Halo...inspired by vegetable soup and 1 Cor. 13:)

Today is making-canned vegetable-soup day.

It is a fun(sort-of) job but all-the-more so because of those who enjoy eating it! 

It's like that with a lot of life's more mundane parts...not the what but the why!

Not what it does for our fingers but what it does for our hearts!

It makes us glad to be alive no matter what our age

It keeps us from becoming cold to time’s turning of page

And life’s mundane-ness laughs with joy ineffable, profuse

Because it offers up a purpose we can never loose

It crowns life’s common moments with inexplicable peace

And drives afar the winds of discontent in its increase

It fills yet stills the tempest on an ocean held within

Its kindness like a bulwark in the midst of cruel chagrin

It cannot be mistaken for anything else because

There is no substitute, no subterfuge to trick its laws

Of God in us, then others first; immersed in heaven’s glove

Where we are glad to be alive because of love, love, love

© Janet Martin

1 Cor.13 tells us about love...
 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. ² And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³ And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned,^[a] but have not love, it profits me nothing.
⁴ Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; ⁵ does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; ⁶ does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; ⁷ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
⁸ Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part. ¹⁰ But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. ¹² For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
¹³ And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

September Serenade

Sometimes it pains us as we see time’s dauntless intervention

September wears a crown of brown and gold with hints of rust

We climb aboard mist-morning barge knowing its sure direction

To moor upon a purple sea of twilight-tinted dust

Steadfast, this ‘bearing witness of’ time's command, unrelenting

September shares its apples like anthems of sun-kissed spoil

And teaches us life-lessons about the payoff of planting

Of harvest-revelations and of fruit after long toil

 

(September dares to win us with cricket-song stippled days...)

We brave the wave that settles on the grave of time’s undoing

September dares to win us with cricket-song stippled days

While we enjoy and mourn life’s ever-yielding yet pursuing

The Alpha and Omega of love’s common-creature ways

The board-walk at the beach is bare; the air wears pale gray-yellow

September stirs the inner-us to slow our footsteps, oh,

While wood and garden tune the strings of nature’s wooing cello

A serenade to summer and life’s constant letting go

© Janet Martin

Simply Beautiful

There is something so pure and precious about

Young lovers on wedding days

With starry-eyed gazes still innocent

Of love’s more commonplace ways

 

But, there is something unrivaled in beauty

When, after love’s laughter and tears

They still remain faithful to ‘for better or worse’

And vows they have kept, with years

© Janet Martin

Precious Prelude

It is constant, this Becoming

This heart-numbing hold-let-go

Turning touch to echo strumming

What once seemed common and slow

And we wish we had not wished so

For the day that now we hold

While The While that spawned its echo

Lies in vaults of yester-gold

Darling, we are never finished

Have-and-hold, love’s bold embrace

Shapes with guile of smiles replenished

Brand new echoes we will trace

Stirring hunger’s heart with anguish

Overcome with gratitude

That once we were part of this, love

Letting go’s precious prelude

© Janet Martin

I told my hygienist this morning when she asked 'how's life, anything new?' that I'm dealing with sentimental heart-tugs after years of Monday morning babysitting!

 

 

Subtle Begetting

 Good Monday morning, right?!;-)

This rise-and-shine becomes us;

Each hello and farewell

Each break of dawn,

Each wake of dusk,

Each tolling season-knell

Defines within our Being

That which would bloat, benign

Save for the hope

Where hurt and dirt

Of toil and loss refines

The heart and hand with learning

While Time retains its ways

Across the no-returning

Of ten-thousand yesterdays

Where we lie down and rise up

Yoked with life’s fret-and-fuss

Forgetting in its letting

Ah,

It is begetting us

© Janet Martin

Today is full of Unknowns awaiting our response! 

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Heb.12:1-2