Of Gray and Gold

 

At day break gold put on quite a glow 

before gray lowered/glowered to extinguished its show

Soon, should we live to see it through

Dusk will obscure dawn’s virgin view

Soon time will gather gray and gold

As chimes of tick and tock are tolled

To bygone’s immutable mold

In words we say and deeds we do

As we look back then on today

At scenes that none can brush away

Will echo-fray we leave behind

Be patient, true, gentle and kind

With fellow-trave’lers first in mind

Where gold and gray tones interplay

We cannot see what waits to be

Where gates fling wide to set it free

On teeming tides of come-what-may

We sail toward the close of day

In ebbs and flows, now gold, now gray

While making history

© Janet Martin

After a gray shower passed through

the sun has returned,

 working its golden wonders once more!

Looks like cross-country skiing is running to an end for this season...hopefully!

As much as I enjoy it I would never choose it over an early spring!

Ecccles. 3:1-8

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens:

2 a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3 a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

6 a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

7 a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8 a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.

Me, with a basket of laundry to hang out

am glad for 'a time for gold'...

Little girl with a new, polka-dot umbrella, 

was wishing for 'a time for more gray plip-plop of raindrops'!

(it kinda looks like she might get her wish😊)

...looks like a true March gray-gold kaleidoscope kind of day today!

This Holy Hush...

'The poet’s heart within us craves the holy hush.'

This is the last line in yesterday's Daily Bread Devotion..

My oldest sister called around 8:00 to see if I had read it yet,

and if it inspired any writing at my end😀 (bless her heart)

I had read it a few hours earlier as a quick devotion 

before an early morning tots-arrival day etc. .Beautiful!

I tried to squirrel the sparks away hoping the iron (or ashes) wouldn't grow too cold...

This, the last paragraph in the devotional, felt a poem :

"Nature sometimes seizes 

our attention in ways 

we don’t like

. Regardless of what happens to us 

or what we observe around us, 

each moment—

magnificent, 

menacing, 

or mundane—

can inspire 

our worship. 

The poet’s heart 

within us craves 

the holy hush."

By Tim Gustafson

'Worship inspired by the ways Nature applies its brush'

The poet's heart within us craves creation's holy hush

Worship inspired by the ways Nature applies its brush

Where That which no one can annul is strange and sweetly drawn 

Toward Something Invisible This Holy Hush will spawn 

In woodland's deep, or break of day, or plush-prism snowfall

Or twilight as it tucks away the rush of beck and call

Or earth after autumn has stripped leaf-mirth from lofty limb

Or August nights stippled with cricket-choir's vibrant hymn

 

...or as we bask in waning winter's pools of golden sun

Where heaven tips a blue flask full of gardens, dream-dirt spun

Or after tot is fast asleep and childish noise subdued

Like the calm after storms that little girls and boys exude 

In the crook of a countryside brook-bank as we recline

Wooed by a wand of willow-frond or wild cucumber vine 

Or as we gaze at silver haze of stars on black backdrop

Or as we drink the winsome ink of rain-song's drip and plop

Or as we taste the brickle from a 'cicle, maple-sweet

Or as we dash with dusty splash through pastures in bare feet

Or as we pause beneath the gauze of apple-blossomed arc

Something we cannot quite explain ignites a sacred spark

The poet's heart within us craves This Holy Hush, God-bent

Worship whispers awe's spark into a blaze of wonderment

Where That which no one can annul is drawn with tender stare  

 Toward Someone Invisible, but also walking there 

 © Janet Martin

More Than a Birthday Poem...

Twenty years old!

How can it be?!

No more teenagers in the family!

We are all blessed by your kind, sweet and sunny personality!

God bless you, Dear Daughter, as you seek to honour Him

with your choices, hopes and dreams

This is more than a birthday poem

To wish you happiness

More than a toast to hopes and dreams

And their smiling success

More than sweet sentiment’s flourish

Of tender, loving care

This is more than a birthday wish

My dear, it is a prayer

A prayer, that He who has begun

His lovely work in you

Would always be the Faithful One

You trust to see it through

A prayer for God’s grace to bestow

Faith enough to proceed

Knowing for all we cannot know

He knows just what we need

This is a prayer for joy and peace

(for this is happiness)

A prayer that wisdom would increase

And with it, thankfulness

A prayer that life returns to you

The loveliness you give

That God will shine His face on you

For as long as you live

© Janet Martin

The Lord bless you and keep you;

25 The Lord make His face shine upon you,

And be gracious to you;

26 The Lord [a]lift up His countenance upon you,

And give you peace.” ’

Num.6: 24-26

Pure Delight's Promise

 

This wall-art was retired from one of the bedrooms to make room

for fresh décor, so I claimed it for an empty wall by the front door

 to read again and again to remind myself how joy may remain full!

Psalm 37:4

If we delight ourselves in He

Of boundless creativity

Who authored sky and sod and sea

With infinite authority

In He whose promises prevail

Whose love does not falter or fail

Who stands with us when storms assail

When mountains seem too sheer to scale

In He whose plan instills the seed

To sustain our physical need

But did for far more intercede

When from sin’s debt mankind was freed

…who became sin who knew no sin

Once and for all, an offering

Who saw the triumph death would bring

After the cross of suffering

If we delight ourselves in He

Who overthrew the enemy

And denied death its mastery

‘Ah grave, where is thy victory’

If we delight in He who gave

His Son, each one of us to save

So when we brave death’s sullen wave

Heaven, not hell will meet the grave

If delight in He whose art

Steals our breath and death’s cold smart

He will fulfill with joy, His part

In the desires of the heart

© Janet Martin

Delight in God- Charles Spurgeon

Because Time Flies...

This week I added two tots and an extra day to the childcare routine.

...as I repeat the weathered words-

Where did this last year go?!!

A year ago one of these tots was born,

then blink! 

she is one! and mom is back to work!

The wings that bear away the day 

Flash silver in the sun 

We from our heaps of frazzled fray 

And battles to be won 

Behold the Bird the draws the dawn 

From some far-phantom nest 

Ere dusk across the air is drawn 

And feathers fold in rest 

Where soon the fledgling, wild with youth 

Will join the gaping clan 

That wonders at the ageless truth 

Of fleeting days of man 

As Time’s momentous bird of prey 

Startles us with its wings 

And keens us to the changeless way 

Of ever-changing things 

We, tethered to Time’s old surprise 

Surge with the awe-struck throng 

Aboard the barge of  'how time flies’ 

That draws life’s charge along 

And teaches us to treasure more 

The moments as they come 

Because Time flies toward a door 

Not one will return from 

© Janet Martin 

Psalm 39:5
You, indeed, have made my days as handbreadths, 

and my lifetime as nothing before You. 

Truly each man at his best exists as but a breath. 

Selah

Beauty-calls

Sometimes Jim just shakes his head when I say,

'Gotta go! Beauty calls!'😊

Ecclesiastes 3:11 

He has made everything beautiful in its time. 

He has also set eternity in the human heart; 

yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Beauty calls, thus task will wait 

Before the sun falls past the gate 

And tucks the twinkle of today 

Its mementos of fleeting fray 

Into The Land of Far Away 

Beauty calls and bids us pause 

To marvel at its gifts because 

So much of life is harsh and hard 

So much of love is sorrow-scarred 

So much of laughter is tear-starred 

Beauty calls; we should reply 

So small beneath the big old sky 

But tall enough and not too old 

To balk at Duty’s rigid hold 

Beauty’s sheer wonders to behold 

With eyes to see and ears to hear 

And mouths to speak a word of cheer 

It dawns upon us wondrously 

We have the wherewithal to be 

Part of the call and the beauty 

© Janet Martin 

What Is the Purpose of a Poem?

A poem leaps, lilts, swirls and sings 

Syllabic waterfall

 

A poem may not change the world 

But it can cheer the heart 

A eureka of joy unfurled 

Where secret sorrows smart 

A poem is a butterfly 

Perched on spring’s budded hold 

From a cocoon of winter-sky 

Hope’s welkin wings unfold 

A poem is a gift composed 

Of ink-wrought counterpanes 

Where words weave wonders juxtaposed 

With troubles aches and strains 

A poem probes beneath Façade 

To tug at tender strings 

That keep the soul attuned to God 

Amidst a mess of Things 

A poem leaps, lilts, swirls and sings 

Syllabic waterfall 

It tumbles from ten-thousand springs 

In metered madrigal 

A poem paints its scenery 

With ordinary jot 

While spilling an art gallery 

To theaters of thought 

Ah, here a darling daisy beams 

And there a meadow-brook 

Its bank, a haven for daydreams 

A fishing pole, a book 

A poem unveils city-streets

Upon a parchment tray 

It teases sound of hurried feet

To paper-work-a-day  

A poem is the salt sea-air 

Where farewells sweep and surge 

And Poem is a tender prayer 

As seasons ebb and merge 

A poem is Beauty at large 

An earnest work of praise 

God, guide those who shoulder the charge 

Of unearthing its phrase 

...because a poem is far more

Than fickle fits of rhyme

A poem keens us to a Door

That ushers us from Time

© Janet Martin

Eternal Wonder

 

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, 

a worker who does not need to be ashamed, 

rightly dividing the word of truth.

2 Tim.2:15

Thy Word-Amy Grant

Keep God’s Word in your heart 

It is His hand held out 

To hold the shield that thwarts the darts 

Of fear and hate and doubt 

In God’s Word fix your trust 

While dark doom’s billows roll 

Faith keeps steadfast the bark of dust 

That harbours deathless soul 

Cling to the Word of God 

When storms of life assail 

It is the only staff and rod 

Of hope that will not fail 

God's word wakens within

The wonder of His love

And how to guard the heart from sin

That plagues this mortal glove

God’s Word is sure and true 

Heaven to earth’s embrace 

His grace the arms that draw us to 

Behold him face to face 

© Janet Martin

Heaven and earth will pass away, 

but My words will by no means pass away.

Matt.24:35

To the pure, all things are pure, 

but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, 

nothing is pure. 

In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. 

16They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. 

They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.

Titus 1:15-16