On Dreams and Wedding Plans...

 Sometimes it hits me a-fresh, full in the heart how, for all the dreams that never happened, God gave me more than I could ever have dreamed!

Some dreams come true

And some just die

That’s the way

Beneath Time’s sky

I look at you

All full of dreams

So unaware

Of moment-streams

The gift of youth

Is sweet and swift

You laugh, blind to

Moments a-drift

But as I smile

And look at you

I thank my God

For dreams come true

© Janet Martin

Here's to many dreams come true and just enough that don't, to keep the dream alive.

Live in the Moment

Live in the moment, says the motto my sister just gave to me as a reminder in this crazy time!

Live in the moment

Inhale, exhale

Spring, summer, autumn

To winter’s regale

Live in each moment

Its muddle and mess

For soon they slip softly

To past’s quietness

Live in the moment

And oh, do not pine

For fruit that has fallen

From yesterday’s vine

Live in the moment

Do not try to borrow

Strength for the measure

That waits in tomorrow

But, live in each moment

Both blue sky and gray

Are transient flickers

Fading away

© Janet Martin 

A month from yesterday is the wedding! Four weeks from tomorrow! and we are trying to finalize all the 'maybe we could do this' details...and still regular life happens beneath the big sky, so by the dear moment-measure of God's grace go I/we. Hope your moments are good today.

 

In Prayer

   

Before the gold and gray consumes

my thought and draws me to its care

Lord, let me rest a little while

within Your gentle arms, in prayer

The ebb and flow, the high and low

of living, I could never bear

My Lord, if first I could not rest

within Your gentle arms, in prayer

Then, come what may of gold or gray

on life's highway; I journey where

Your presence whispers still to me

within Your gentle arms, in prayer

Janet~

12 years ago many of us fell on our faces pleading to God; may we every day plead to Him on the behalf of all who suffer and all who do not know Him! 

Of Testaments and Trust

   

  

 Often I am stunned speechless by the miracle in a seed.

We sprinkle seed of faith on dust

A testament of our trust

Forbid it then that we should turn

And for a lesser portion yearn

The God who turns our seed to fruit

Beholds the blossom and the root

Forbid it then that we despair

Clinging to fear instead of prayer

For He who renders fruit to seed

Beholds and knows our every need

Forbid it then that we embrace

Our nothingness instead of grace

© Janet Martin

When we become small then God becomes big!

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." 2 Cor. 12:9

Just As I Am

September-gold

Were I an artist of easel

And could I paint fair nature’s scene

I’d choose September’s tarnished sprawl

Of dusty blue and burnished green

And if my palette would but hold

One shade, I think I would choose gold

The gold of harvest, not yet gleaned

Of heavy sunlight gently screened

By not-quite-gold of maple leaf

I’d paint the gold of cornstalk sheaf

And golden-rod, sun-flower bloom

The gold of honeyed afternoon

The walnut leaf that stilly falls

Where summer fades and cricket calls

I’d paint the gold of late-day hush

The hill of parched and tangled brush

Where once we watched springtime unfold

Before earth traded green for gold

Gold-golden pear and golden tea

Canvas of golden memory

Ah, sweet September languishing

Against a summer wearying

Where every shade within its hold

Before it fades must pass through gold

© Janet Martin

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.