With Veiled Eyes...

God’s thoughts are a mystery

We cannot explain

The reasoning of His perfect say

But someday in Heaven

All will be plain

When this world has vanished away

Life’s tribulation

Its pain and its grief

Are not absences of His grace

But, by these we long

For Heaven’s relief

And eternity’s resting place

The curse of sin

Covers the earth

With many a tortured woe

Redemption offers

Hope’s re-birth

In Calvary’s ceaseless flow

Man’s faith is tested

To be proven; refined

God’s love is oft misunderstood

In spite of our folly

He is faithful and kind

And above all; God is good

Our earth-dimmed vision

Cannot see the whole

We see; but only in part

Through a glass darkly

God sees man’s soul

And the deepest intent of the heart

God’s thoughts are a mystery

We cannot explain

His sacred and holy tears

But someday in Heaven

All will be plain

As the veil in our eyes disappears

© Janet Martin

 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.Isa. 55:8-9 NIV

God is Still Good

In spite of life’s trials

Oft misunderstood

One truth is rock-solid

God is still good

In spite of His chastening

Oft misunderstood

One truth remains

God is still good

In spite of our thanklessness

Our greed and our lust

God’s goodness abides

In Him we trust

In spite of His love

Oft misunderstood

One truth never wavers

God is still good

© Janet Martin

The Sunset Cradle...

Jasmine, demons, window, scrap, ample, montage,
Flawed, granite, trapped, whistle, domain, sunset

This old table in the west window

cradled her sunsets for nigh fifty years

A montage of memories tuned by the whistle

of a January gale trapped on the outside

suddenly arouses pictures of a surface

cluttered with quilt scraps

or potted red geraniums

or perhaps in October 

a granite bowl of gleaming apples

much to eager, rosy cheeked children's delight

Flawed realities have been perfected by the forgiveness of time

No one ever questioned its domain

there, in the west window the old table and an old chair reigned

as from its visage-point jasmine rivers crawled white in June

and demons wandered black on a night with no moon

But history’s ample lap cannot preserve it

as the auctioneer shouts…what am I bid?

Who’ll give me ten? Let me throw in a chair

Ah, yes…. That chair where…
 The bitter sweetness of sunset years washes her face

© Janet Martin

The Sunday Whirl

With Heart wide Open

Too often I do not even notice

This gift you give to me

But trample coldly on it

And I don’t thank you properly

For this miracle of beauty

I ought always to embrace

As your mercy lays before me

Another day of grace

© Janet Martin

Prayer: God, help us to see the beauty of this gift,

Not only now in the calm stillness,

but as the wrapping falls away

as glorious sunrises turn gray

Revealing deeper shades

Of what is as yet, unknown,

When we struggle and stumble
Or feel misunderstood; alone

When we are weary and worn

Let us not abuse or hold this gift

With impatience or scorn

For this gift you lay before us

Is no free-fall from above

It is a miracle, born of compassion

And bestowed in perfect love

Thank-you God

Of Things Cursed

Temptation dangles like a serpent

In an idle, slothful mind

The fruit gleams, sweet upon the tree

As to its vice we're blind

We long to reach and pluck it

Taste its sugar-coated dread

But its afterglow would haunt us

Like vile ghosts inside our head

While the thing that seemed so lovely

Is a curs-ed, empty shell

And the fruit that promised heaven

But a tragic glimpse of hell

For the well of carnal thirsting

Is a void nothing can quench

As the harvest of our tasting

Bears the fruit of consequence

© Janet Martin

Today's Friday Thoughts

Things are merely things

They have no good or evil spirit

It’s what mankind does with them

That defines their worth and merit.

I remember asking my dad when I was a child if such-and-such a thing is bad and I never forgot his answer...He said, ‘things are not bad. Nothing in and of itself is bad or good; it’s what we do with them that makes ‘things’ what they are. ‘Things’ have the potential for both…it’s up to us to choose how to use them!’

We cannot blame ‘things’ for our weaknesses

Things obey the command of the hands they are in

Hands obey thought
and thought, oh thought…

How prone you are

To sin

What a mighty sword we wield

Held in our thought

Prayer is its protective shield

If used a lot

It seems I hear a constant voice

And I believe its name is Choice

God, I prayed for patience…I’m still waiting for your answer…

Jesus loves me this I know

I looked into a flower

And it told me so…

© Janet Martin

Of Summer

Our first day of summer was a moody one! It began, hot, heavy and sunny before thunderstorms moved through bringing a slight cool-down and a sunset master-piece. 

Soon the gold that warms the sod

Withdraws its sultry sheen

And world’s transformed by thoughts of God

Will lose their verdant green

Too soon the lark of summer-song

Will fly off to the south

And all these hours for which we long

Devoured in Time’s mouth

Of summer

Too soon the room of July mirth

And flowers fair and sweet

Will shed their bloom back to earth

A dead rose at our feet

The shifting wave that lilts and moans

And beckons from the shore

Will heave with moody undertones

Closing the wanton door

Of summer

Ah, life will always have its share

Of care and tares and trouble

So dance upon hope's buoyant air

Before dreams turn to stubble

And you should turn with sudden grief

To see upon the hill

A silhouette of crimson leaf

And echoing quadrille

Of summer

© Janet Martin

Make this summer’s first week-end memorable!

Get out there and drink it in

Time is a tumbling water-wheel

And too soon it is over again!

I kid the kids sometimes and tell them we have two seasons at our house…Winter and potlucks!

Does anyone have any fresh pot-luck ideas? I’m stumped and it’s just June! I need food for tomorrow and a ladies’ tea-party dessert for Sunday.

The Shape of a Memory

Don’t forget me, he said,

And he slipped away

As God laid a satin spread

Across the sky to close the day

Coral-pink and amber-gold,

The ocean in her eye

Is more than firm resolve can hold

While he whispers good-by

A thousand moments blend and blur

Then slip beyond life’s reach

She wonders, does he think of her

On thought’s elusive beach

Don’t forget me, his farewell plea

Whispers in her ear

She holds the shape of memory

Within her smile; her tear

© Janet Martin

This poem's inspiration is due in part to an awesome sunset tonight and watching Ann of Green Gables in the continuing story.