Wednesday, April 1, 2015

No Time to Resist...



 PAD Challenge Day one: write a resistance poem

Time extends its invitation
Rising from yon beaming brink
Renewal and expectation
Dawn Hand-painted, gold and pink

Who will dare resist its offer?
This, the day the Lord has made
Spills to earth from heaven’s coffer
Melting midnight’s palisade

We were born for this, my darling
Let the Past its vastness prey
See, the sky is full of morning
Come, before it fades away

On the harpsichord of ages
Moment-melodies untwist
Time is eager to turn pages
We have no time to resist

© Janet Martin

Wretched Man That I Am

It's back! The PAD challenge. Just when it feels like we're tired of writing with one tire stuck in the mud along comes November and April with poem-a-day prompts

 PAD Challenge day one prompt, write a resistance poem.
 
James 4:5-10



Just because we ignore a fact
Does not mean it doesn’t exist
The inner man under constant attack
By flesh seemingly born resist
The good we know we should do, but oh
The bad we should not, that we do
And often we cry with him too
Because flesh is prone to resist the One
That helps us resist the foe
Yet hope abides through Jesus, God’s Son
It is by His grace we go

© Janet Martin

For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. Gal.5:17

 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. James 4:7



For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.…
I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. Rom.7:18-25






Tuesday, March 31, 2015

What To Do!





Unwrap, untie, unfold, undo
This day will not
Return to you

Enjoy, explore, empty, embrace
This thing that
No one can retrace

Walk slow, hold on, let go, for oh
How swift the tide
Of moments flow

© Janet Martin

‘I simply do not dread any season or beg a day to haste; they all go way to fast with no moment to waste’, I remarked to hubby on the weekend as snow dashed the edges of fading day...evoking a tender ache for something I simply cannot name.

Tell me, where did March go?!


Winter will pass,

the days will lengthen,

the ice will melt in the pasture pond.

The sparrow will return and sing,

the frogs will awake,

the warm wind will blow again.

All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur-

this lovely world,

these precious days...



Charlotte, from Charlotte's Web

It Looked Like Rain, But Then





It looked like rain, and then the sky
Unchained a lovely melody
That filled its girth with azure mirth
Where they said a gray cloud would be

It looked like rain, but then instead
Of splish-and-splash, it turned the page
And chose a tune of sun-gold noon
With blue atop a sweep of sage

Sometimes it looks like rain but then
The waters in a higher hand
Part wondrously like the Red Sea
And we walk through Day on dry land

© Janet Martin

I waited to do laundry because earlier it clouded over
and looked like rain before turning into sun-gold Hallelujahs!
 



Without Easter







He is not here but is risen. Luke 24:6

How could hope’s well-spring surge
What then could our guilt purge?

How could we ever sing?
No joy could yield full measure nor

And every bloom a gloomy thorn
Pressed hard upon the head

Without Easter, then Christmas
Would be a vain affair
Without Easter eternity
Would be too long to bear

Without Easter, our passage
Through life’s struggle and pain
Of all that yet remains

Without Easter, a promise
Would be hollow, and Hope
A mystery; without Easter
Tell me, how could we cope?

© Janet Martin

What is hope? The world cries. What is another word for hope? There is only one word for hope; Jesus. Why Jesus? Because of what we call Easter.