Happy Day-After-Christmas Joy!

In Canada businesses are closed today for what is known as Boxing Day.

Happy Back-to-work-day, dear American Friends!

I was lamenting the fact that it's After Christmas and I didn't get cards, visits, etc. to everyone I had hoped to before...but if we want to make Christmas last all year then it is still not too late to show someone we care! 

Happy After Christmas Day/Joy! 

 Anticipation...

Togetherness aka, Enjoyment

then always, Afterward!

We must take Time

Right where we are

To touch-taste-live-laugh-love

Tomorrow today’s treasure

Will be sealed in bygone’s trove

Tomorrow

Today’s Now will be

A sparkle of spent gold

A little glint of History

Soft hinged to what we hold

©Janet Martin

A Christmas Wish (from our house to yours)

Today, for all those times it seems the best words go unsaid

I’d like to pen a little rhyme and write them down instead

For you to keep and look back on, part of a memory

A simple sort of Christmas gift preserved in poetry

“Thank-you for dropping by this porch, the ‘keep-it-up’ and such

Across the miles you bring your smiles and kind and gentle touch

I pray the Lord to bless and keep, for He is good and true

And may tHis joy and peace of Christmas reign the whole year through

Your quick words of encouragement, to you may seem quite small

But friend, I’d like for you to know I keep them, one and all

Then on those darker days that all of us have now and then

They come to me and whisper ‘don’t give up’ or ‘try again’

I’d like to wish to you and yours a Merry Christmas Day

And that you sense the love of God in life’s come-what-so-may

I’d like for you to know (though some of us have never met)

That you are loved; And pray this year may be our best year yet

God bless you as we celebrate the birth of our Saviour, Jesus!

With love,

From Janet Martin
(and family)

The Perfect Gift

 The perfect Gift has been given!

Have you received it?

For God so love the world that He gave

His only begotten Son

That whosoever believes in Him

will not perish but have everlasting life

John 3:16

Fragility of circumstance

Can spark a darksome dread

Ability to trust God grants

His perfect peace instead

To cope with naught but what one sees

Can make us fall apart

To hope in God will set at ease

The struggle in the heart

The prize that keeps some mesmerized

Showcases vanity

The wise, through One for us chastised

Embrace humility

Who can afford the war of Want

A lonely way to live

Man is not Lord nor can he grant

What only God can give

He does not say that ease will pave
The way He did atone
Because of what Love gave, death's grave
Is but a steppingstone

Then praise the Giver of The Gift
Salvation's wondrous plan 
His grace delivers, spans the rift
That gaped twixt God and man

...and thus the joy angels first told
To shepherds filled with fright 
For us, as in those days of old
Is still the same True Light

© Janet Martin

Jeremiah 17:7
But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is Him.

Sacred Mantle...

We all know someone touched by death's solemn sadness, their lives forever altered...

It wraps a sort of sacred mantle about the heart for what we dare not take for granted; each other!

I visited with such a mother yesterday, and we talked of other families who are mourning as well.

Sacred mantle ’round the heart

Who can tell the morrow

Who can know that solemn start

To love’s anguished sorrow?

Who can know, amidst the rush

Of love’s common giving

Who will be the next of us

To pass beyond the living?

Sacred mantle ‘round the heart

Keens a kinder gladness

For each face and place and part

Not yet rent with sadness

© Janet Martin

Little Poem for a Big 'Best Blessing'

It’s nice to have nice neighbours

Wouldn’t you agree

The kind that is but isn’t

Kinda like family

The kind that you can call on

For help, hello and such

A friendly wave, a catch-up chat

If we’ve been out of touch

The kind that makes humbly sure

That we’ve been double-blessed

By the people that live next door

Because our neighbours are the best!

© Janet Martin