Of Half-way and Beyond

 Happy Already-halfway-through-March?!

...prepare to meet your God.”

He who forms the mountains,

who creates the wind,

and who reveals his thoughts to mankind,

who turns dawn to darkness,

and treads on the heights of the earth—

the Lord God Almighty is his name.

Amos 4:12-13

He who turns dawn to darkness...

Already halfway through what feels like a page we just turned

Moments outpoured and shaken into lessons taught and learned

Wonderment reawakened to the way Time spills its zest

Where east horizon hoists the flare that dims upon the west

Whilst renewing the lease where dreams and circumstance compete

Then easing into archives both the bitter and the sweet

Already at the halfway point of a month just begun

As we marvel at means of ‘nothing new under the sun’

While struggling with the age-old ways of trouble and success

An elemental gauge that tunes and vexes happiness

Hinged to a Higher Power, like a flower that unfolds

To strew its petals on a path that Looking Back beholds

Already halfway through what was new not so long ago

No one can tame the tides (ides) that hide a sacred undertow

As toss of seasons rolls across the moss-glossed mouths of graves

Where none but God can see that halfway point of Numbered Days

And everyone should give more earnest heed to where time flows

Not forward but back to the One by whose kind grace man goes

If we have passed the halfway post of three-score years and ten

Then we know we are halfway through an average life span

And whether halfway through a day or week, a month or year

We ought to be aware and prepare for Death drawing near

And love life’s Giver, God, with all our heart and soul and mind

Before Soul slips through that which leaves all halfway points behind

© Janet Martin

Faith's Opportunity

Last Sunday our speaker reminded us 

that 'every challenge is an opportunity'.

How will we respond?

He Giveth More Grace- Don Moen

2 Cor.12:9

 “My grace is sufficient for you, 

for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

Each season of life

runs rife with reasons

to trust God's Sovereignty 

The weight of what

yet waits is but

faith's opportunity

The weight of what yet waits grants opportunity for faith or fear

The Unknown, like an ocean that we cannot see or hear

Rolls in across the sands of time, revealing, breath by breath

The way that waves of day to day run rife with life and death

Spring, summer, autumn, winter, like a season-carousel

Spin round and round, on stomping grounds of hello and farewell

The weight of what yet waits to rush through gates barring Until

Keens senses to advances of its immense escadrille

Nobody knows what morrow holds, of joy or sorrow’s toll

Where Dust-to-dust must learn to trust the Keeper of the soul

Then, as we reconcile the Whiles that What-if contemplates

God walks with us and eases thus, the weight of what yet waits

All that we do not understand, oh God, help us to yield

Into Your nail-scarred Hands until Your purpose is revealed

For though we cannot see beyond the moment that we face

The weight of what yet waits is never greater than Your grace

© Janet Martin

Some Of Them Are Spring

 There is so much to live for when the sun unwraps the earth

But we embrace sere sweeps to start, the heart wild with delight

At prospects of what waits beneath the waning deeps of white

Yes, we are straining at the bridle and chomping at the bit

to remove words like 'almost' and 'soon' inserted in the verses below 

From Song of Solomon 2:11-12

For, lo, the winter is (almost) past,

the rain is (soon) over and gone;

The flowers (will soon) appear on the earth;

the time of the singing of birds (almost) is come,

and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

Yes, in Ontario we know there will still be snow

but this bit of spring-wink the past few days has kindled the fever!

Last week I clipped some lilac and apple-tree branches and put them in a vase

...this week, a bit of indoor spring!

There is so much to live for when the sun unwraps the earth

Like a grand gift of hills and rills and woodlands primed with birth

When birdsong fills yon paling arc as darkness melts like snow

And wonder is a hunter, hungry for floral hello

And nature to put on a show of green in every shade

As bud and bulb begin to flow with posy promenade

But we embrace sere sweeps to start, the heart wild with delight

At prospects of what waits beneath the waning deeps of white

Of garden-getaways and farmers stirring sacred dust

To plant a whole new season’s worth of earth’s ‘in God we trust’

For spring will always find its way, though it may take a bit

To convince Old Man Winter we are weary of his wit

The brook bounces with ballads, bubbling, sparkling melody

After cold bars that swung ajar and set its music free

The corner of the porch where we shivered and hunched last week

Now leaves a kiss of summer on the pallid, up-turned cheek

The hour of first flowers starts to nudge, tickle and tease

Bowers of thought that long did not indulge such fantasies

There is so much to smile and dream and sing for as the world

Waves like a beaming banner beneath God’s goodness unfurled

Where joy and grief will fill the sheaf of days, but not without

The mercy of the One who turns time’s season-wheel about

And threads the lusty loom of life with multi-coloured string

That always first runs through His fingers; some of them are Spring

© Janet Martin

Enough

We love, because love never fails

...then trust the Author of it

 to work out the veiled details

Love takes pleasure in other people's happiness-es... 

and big or small successes

Do you ever feel like there's no way, in the girth of need, to do/be enough?

How misunderstood; for there is no dearth when it comes to love

It is when Self stands in the way we sense love's lack thereof

No, we don’t need to know the details when it comes to love

So, we pour out our heart-and-soul, then God makes it enough

We give out of what His love grants (ah, nothing is our own)

As we entrust the circumstance to ‘Lord, Thy will be done’

Love does not count amounts and tally up dollars and cents

It does not keep track records of ‘the heart’s full abundance’

But rather replies humbly in the way only love can

Love does not seek itself, but firstly God, then fellowman

Love does not doubt the Author and Perfecter of Faith’s ‘yes’

But takes a flying leap and lands upon His promises

Where a small glimpse of Heaven spills as need relies on trust

Knowing full well that hell on earth is greed inflamed by lust

Love does not barter to augment miserly treasury

Love is an ardent benefactor, grieved by poverty

Love does not need to know the why and wherefore of it all

Learning that in the giving IS living love’s miracle

Love lacks nothing and does not ask for recompense for deeds

But is a sower that goes forth and scatters fruitful seeds

Knowing though needs are many, we will always have enough

Not by the worth of penny but by the Birthright of Love

© Janet Martin

Col.3:12-14

 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, 

compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 

 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, 

forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

  And above all these put on love, 

which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Today, More Than Word-play Melt-away

May today be more than 

prattle of word play

but rather a vison 

with a mission! 

(or is it mission with a vision😊)

Part of my mission today? window washing!!

(to clear the vision a bit😀)

Oh! and may the snow-melt continue!!

Yesterday morning-

-this morning!

As much as some of us enjoy word-play,

may today be much more!

Circumstance grants participants the chance to do our part

Compassion is a soldier that shoulders the faint of heart

Desire is a fire that requires dire care

Where altogether tethered, we weather its 'whether' (or not) share

Emotion is an ocean of devotion’s counterparts

Persuasion, the invasion of temptation’s subtle darts

Assumption is the gumption to conclude truth without facts

Pride is a deadly guide that flatters, lies, lures and distracts

Redemption is exemption from an awful debt we owed

Forgiveness the divineness of God’s grace to man bestowed

Belief, the capsheaf of achievement, arrogance undone

Salvation; liberation’s restoration through God’s Son

Poetry is the pottery from think-ink’s spinning wheel

Success is happiness with less rather than More’s appeal

Peace is release from fear, my dear, as trust hoists up its sail

With Hope, faith’s rope secured in promises that will not fail

Today is more than word-play on age-pages signed and sealed

Choice is a voice that needs no noise to have the heart revealed

Dawn is the spawn of opportunity’s brawn beckoning

Time is a stair we climb toward the Lord and reckoning

© Janet Martin

Bible Love Notes; The Time is Coming

Col.3:23-24

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, 

as working for the Lord, not for human masters, 

 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. 

It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

Happiness, Heaven-on-earth and Love

This poem was written with young parents in mind but

has something in it for us oldies too😉😄

(yes, it's muddy boots and wet-everything season!)

(because I do childcare some 'memories' stay quite fresh😅)

"Me? Trouble?!! 

How can you even think it?!"

It doesn’t always look like much; the noisy thick of it

Can spill and spread in such a way to make you ‘sick’ of it

Yes, you confess the mess is often quite more-than-enough

It doesn’t look like happiness, heaven-on-earth or love

You slip on the spaghetti that your darling toddler flung

Next week you’ll find one dried to the ceiling or a chair wrung

The toy-box you replenished at Christmas with eager joy

Is like a decoration ignored by dear girl and boy

Between lost socks-boots-mittens, you find scribbles on the wall

Where budding artists practiced while you answered a phone call

First signs of spring are tracked across the fresh-mopped kitchen floor

‘Enjoy these Best of Days’ says ‘Mrs. Old’ who lives next door

The sink is full of dishes while fridge and cupboard run bare

Baby is teething so you do not have patience a hand to spare

You sure could use the nap your youngster refuses to take

It would work such sweet wonders for your arms, back and headache

The bills are due, there are a few you had not counted on

Thank God for work and by His grace you’ll keep chugging along

…where Something steals your breath as only Little Tot can do

And you forget all but the precious face looking at you

Yes, it can feel like quite a fight, the messy ‘stick’ of it

Keeps you from understanding quite, the tender quick of it

But some day you’ll look back and see (like we did) sure enough

That this really is/was happiness, heaven-on-earth and love

(Optional ending)

(…the point to this ditty I guess is, whether young or old

In the middle of muddle-cuddle-mess-blessed hug-and-hold

Or past the place of youth and grace as we embrace ‘what’s next’

And wonder at the mirror-face, half-laughing and half-vexed

…we ought to try to take and make the best of where we are

Nobody needs to be perfecto or a super-star

But learn to count the beauties and the blessings one by one

Because no matter where we are, where we are is soon gone!)

© Janet Martin

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