What is This Life?

Life is a highway; its step-breadths unfold

In merciful measure of miles gray and gold

Its journey moves forward; it cannot recant

A mile that is traveled; an hour that is spent

Life is a puzzle; its pieces obscure

Both kind and perplexing; for rich or for poor

Its picture keeps changing; One Constant withstands

And He holds the pieces in love’s patient hands

Life is a love-song; its Maestro so dear

His grace tunes each bar as it touches His ear

We lift our instruments, battered offering

Letting His music fill each broken string

Life is a vapor; a wink of the eye

We are not paper-dolls beneath its sky

We are God’s children; harbor of a soul

And life is a highway that leads to its goal

© Janet Martin

 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. James 4:14

Of Moments and Mud...

Life’s moments seem to fall away

Like broken shards of painted clay

Or leaves in autumn; drifting mass

Of echoes on time’s trampled grass

But how they sear and pull and tear

These little moments lying there

Swift, soon the element of youth

Begins to taste life’s timeless truth

Where none evades the fears and tears

Filling the fount of fading years

As we suffer the joys and strife

That mark this little way of life

Love; doubled-edged bulwark and reef

Life’s vertex of comfort and grief

This crux of misery and bliss

How kind and cruel its testing is

As we laugh, dance, stagger and reel

Pressed firmly on the Potter’s wheel

…and though they seem to fall away

Like brittle mud or drifting fray

Life’s moments shape, amend and teach

Passing in gasps, beyond our reach

As by the grace of God we go

Bearing life’s moiling moment-flow

And only when we leave this earth

Will we behold its humble worth

If in the grace of God we trust

Held in the hands that shape this dust

Then, at His feet He will reveal

Perfection from the Potter’s wheel

© Janet Martin

Sometimes it seems like life’s moments unfairly turn on us…but they do not. They are simply opportunities of grace to learn…grace.

But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

1 Cor. 15:10

The Awesome In Between

In between what is to come

And what has passed away

There is a little interlude

We simply call today

And in its brief parenthesis

Of sun and shadow hours

We plant the seed of tare and weed

Or wisdom’s fruit and flowers

In between the mystery

Of morrow’s ether dreams

And yester’s rooted history

A grand allotment gleams

And in love’s gracious rationing

Of have and hold and wants

We cannot choose its circumstance

But simply our response

We do not live in what has passed

Or what is yet to be

For yesterday is ever-cast

The future, fantasy

But here, between known and unknown

We live, laugh, love and weep

Today; its gift slips through our hands

Back to the Giver’s keep

© Janet Martin

Our 'today' is rainy. Victoria loves a rainy day and she curled up beside me this morning and grinned.

Yesterday a neighboring farmer lost a combine...tomorrow? nobody knows.

While We Were Picking Flowers...

You came so soon; wrapped in the croon of zephyr over graves

And we, caught up within the tune of sunny afternoons

Or rain-song on the garden, or the breaking of the waves

Across the shore, were startled by your sure and subtle swoon

The bark, swelling with virgin bud; with hope untried and chaste

Has borne a summer’s worth of evenings and all its moons   

As passion, wild and wonderful in soft enchanted haste

Drifts to that place where ever still the wanton zephyr croons

Were you already there within the first taste of the fruit?

This tender-sweet awareness of seasons, of Time and age

Did you fill Eve with sudden sorrow as she understood

How swift and silently the song of summer seals its page?

You came so soon; no encore, just a wafting overture

Of echoes where the brink of autumn and winter a-wait

While we were picking flowers, caught in summer’s kind allure

We did not turn to see a hand closing the garden gate

© Janet Martin

Cherishing Beautiful

The morning is mantled in dew-drop and mist

Each leaf is a gleaming platter, silver-kissed

The sedum is somewhere between green-to-red

The garden is ragged and ready for bed

And the air is drenched with the ballad of corn

In this hint-of-heaven sweet September morn

The branch that compelled us to pause in the spring

To admire its pinky-froth offering

Is bent low with fruit; plum, apple and pear

The markets are brimming with autumn’s first fare

And though I resolve to preserve this fine day

I know soon its moments will drive it away

…for we cannot keep them, save deep in the heart

Life’s beautiful moments; ever we must part

And though we a-vow to return to them when

The bustling day stills; we will, never again

But ever we press to Unknown’s sullied strife

This is mercy’s sequence of moments and life

© Janet Martin

I was thinking, as I wandered through the dew-splashed yard how, no matter how we cherish a moment, it passes. In the previous post someone commented on hoping to have the courage to ‘let go’ when the time comes and I suddenly remembered having the same feeling as I held our oldest daughter after she was born; how I thought I would never  let go of this unbelievable feeling of Miracle. And deep in the heart it is there, yet other moments mute its first gleam and new miracles awe and steal our breath. We can never go back, but simply cherish Beautiful as it slips though our fingers…

 this song by ABBA expresses my thoughts this time of year...

"Slipping Through My Fingers"

Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile
I watch her go with a surge of that well known sadness
And I have to sit down for a while
The feeling that I'm losing her forever
And without really entering her world
I'm glad whenever I can share her laughter
That funny little girl

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see what's in her mind
Each time I think I'm close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sleep in our eyes, her and me at the breakfast table
Barely awake I let precious time go by
Then when she's gone, there's that odd melancholy feeling
And a sense of guilt I can't deny
What happened to the wonderful adventures
The places I had planned for us to go
Well, some of that we did, but most we didn't
And why, I just don't know

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see what's in her mind
Each time I think I'm close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture
And save it from the funny tricks of time

Slipping through my fingers all the time

Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile
***
***

To our sons and daughters everywhere, a blessing,

 “The Lord bless you
    and keep you; 
 the Lord make his face shine on you
    and be gracious to you; 
 the Lord turn his face toward you
    and give you peace.”

Numbers 6: 24-26

When a Child Leaves Home...

Sometimes I think the house will be too empty when you leave

And the rooms too bare

And I’ll miss the way you leave your things

Lying everywhere

And sometimes I think your house will feel unfinished

Without us

And maybe you’ll miss the way I used to scold

And tidy and fuss

I’ll miss that fourth I love you, and that fourth

I love you too

And I know, even in the excitement you know

You’ll miss it too

But then I remember how new love fills up

Those old and bygone spaces

And how the new in time becomes the dear and

Old familiar places

And I would never withhold from you

The joy of this new life breaking

And I thank God and pray His blessing on

New memories in the making…

Love, Mom~

© Janet Martin

We Are Able

 

Young,

Old,

Maimed,

Blind,

Deaf,

Weak,

Strong,

Healthy,

Sick,
Happy,
Oppressed,
Successful,
Struggling,

Suffering,

Free,

Captive,

Bold,

Bashful,

Brave,

Fearful,

Rich,

Poor,
Student,
Teacher,
Wise,
Foolish,

Tall or short,

Hefty or thin,

Whether in an office,

Mountain-top

Dungeon,

Motor vehicle,

Airplane,

F-22 Raptor,

Minefield,

Mission-field,

Battlefield,

Corn field,
Garden,
Gutter,
Mansion,

Church,

Backwoods,

Wilderness,

Desert,

Jungle,

Stadium,

Prison,

Barn,

Shopping Mall,

School,

Hospital,

Infirmary,

Factory,

House,

Whitehouse,

Poorhouse,

Penthouse,

Street,

We

Are

Able

To

Pray

© Janet Martin

The least and the most we can do, is pray!

Pray without ceasing. Thess. 5:17

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom. 8:38-39

A Call to Prayer

I just received this in my in-box and am sharing it here.

SIM Country Directors,

Please join me in participating in and calling for a day of prayer for Syria and the Middle East. Let us lay aside the day of Sunday, Sept 15^th, and lay hold of God for these lands.  If you feel free to fast and pray -- please do so for that is a very Biblical thing to do. Who knows but that God could act in what seems to us an insoluble problem.  

We, the Evangelical Christian community need to take this as a wake-up call to our duty of prayer. After all, our own Christian brothers and sisters are among those in the cross-fire. The thousands of lives that are being lost and many more that are wounded, Christians or Muslims, are all people for whom Christ died and people for whom He cares. The least we can do is to pray and it is not only worthwhile but necessary to call as many as we can to prayer.

Please forward to all of the church leaders in your area as well. Every one of us has a circle of influence.  Think of the connections that you already have.  If each of us would call our colleagues, our churches, our mission leaders, the international Christian community to prayer we could have millions of Christians praying together.

Already others in the world are taking up the idea:

Dr. Stanley Ling of Singapore writes: "We in the East Asia office will support the day of prayer & fasting on Sept 15.  I'll pass the message and encourage all to participate."    

Dr. Bill Taylor of the World Evangelical Missions Commission writes: 

Have sent your letter with my own thoughts to my church leadership.

Eldon Porter working with COMIBAM in Latin America writes:

I do appreciate hearing from you so please do keep me on your mailing list.  I will call the brothers here to prayer as well.  

Please feel free to pass on this information to your colleagues and by faith let us watch the hand of God move in this situation.

Dr. Howard Brant, Serving with SIM in Ethiopia.

In Christ,

Joshua.