Approx. 15 min. after I took these photos it was pouring rain! now the sun has returned...
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 4:13
From heaven’s atrium of bluest blues
Kindly the touch of God from darkness woos
Daylight, the dew-fed night dies on the air
And we who yet remain are caught up where
The orbit of time’s trek from east to west
Returns us to its century-steeped test
And who of us can prophecy or tell
What waits to spill from gates celestial?
Or who can boast to see beyond the veil
Of a mere moment what Time will exhale?
But this we know, while gasps to eons move
These three abide of faith and hope and love
What good is gained to let our thought-feet stray
Where fear and guilt steal faith and hope away?
Ah love, before death’s white dust stills our cry
And fills this cup where now we strain and sigh
Help us to know you better, how your thirst
Is quenched in cups of water given first
To others thirstier; how faith, hope, love
Fitted together are not often proved
Upon a pedestal where men applaud
But on our faces before Holy God
And on our knees where faith and hope are hard
And love is not a
word but hands help-scarred
The morning blushes with hope’s hallowed wraith
The traffic rushes on highways of faith
Toward Unknowns; for what but faith can lend
To us the courage to do more than just pretend
As we encounter from Love’s nail-scarred hands
New tests to prove where our allegiance stands
Lest our volley of verbal acclaim
When tried would put our pious prose to shame
…from Heaven’s atrium of bluest blues
Kindly the touch of God from darkness woos
Daylight; its appetite ignites the air
And we who yet remain go forth with prayer
© Janet Martin
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Cor. 13:13
