When Time Will Cease to Be

It's that time of year, tax-season... when we take inventory and prepare our paper-work for the accountant etc.

I'm glad we don't need to go back to God over and over to 'settle our account' with Him! 

But, though the account is settled, there will be a great accounting yet where what was done in secret will be made known...

This live-laugh-love

This have-hold glove

This give-and-take melee

Is the life we

Will account for

When Time will cease to be

© Janet Martin

Inspired by this...

This Life We Live

This life we live can give us cause

To moan and groan

To sing and dance

It renders in tick-tock applause

The rubric of

Experience

This life we live bids that we brave

Its hold-me-close

Its long farewells

We dash across the looming grave

On our way

To blooming fells

This life we live, this tug-of-heart

Is not some hapless

Rendezvous

That melds like water-color art

From sky-high reams

Of gold-gray-blue

This life we live slips, vim and verve

Through love's lament,

Its laughter-loss

Is like a constant learning curve

As we shoulder

Hope's albatross

 

This life we live is not our own

This moment-metered

Stint on sod

Is not some trickery time-sown

It is a precious gift

From God

© Janet Martin

From Yonder Port...

From yonder port the birth of day is forging

An invitation to life’s creature care

It dims the dark of night with light of morning

Like legions of hope borne upon the air

Then rise for soon the noon will be upon us

And soon this breadth of day will ebb away

This life we live tallies into its oneness

The sum of how we spend our day to day

Lord, pray we seek but this with humble favor

To love Thee with full heart and soul and mind

And secondly that we may love our neighbor

Thus leaving a kind legacy behind

From yonder port the good Lord parts night’s curtain

Extending to our reach a day of grace

Uncertainty juxtaposed with Life’s Certain

That one day we will meet Him face to face

From yonder port the love of life's Creator

Does not fling forth mere happenstance to sod

But renders with the light of morning's splendor

Continuance of hope and grace of God

© Janet Martin

 For His lovingkindness is great toward us, And the truth of the LORD is everlasting. Praise the LORD! 

Ps.117:2

 Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, My lips will praise You.

Ps.63:3

 

Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Ps.95:1

At the Mercy of Grace

I couldn't help but think of the verse  about the faith of a child when I read Ann's post yesterday...

No one knows what a life, a day, an hour will bring but this we know; God will never leave us!

Dawn tolls Time’s bell; we cannot tell what lies beyond the scrim

That veils all but the here and now as God draws man to Him

How will He choose to use what none can refuse? Mercy’s hand

Granting for our greater good what we don't understand

Here, in life’s common care we bear witness to triumph’s base

Our brokenness, the equalizer in man’s need for grace

For who of us can wash the guilt of mortal sin away?

God’s grace is like a fresh snowfall over earth’s dull brown-gray

It trembles in the break of day as He anoints time's scars

With newness; oh to count the ways of grace is to count stars

He blesses us and keeps us no matter what fools may think

His common grace and love sends sun and rain, melts night with pink

Then, whatsoever Time betides, His promises assure

That He is always at our side; God’s children are secure

And will endure the race His grace appoints with break of day

Fear finds no foothold where faith finds God’s hand to lead the way

© Janet Martin

The story behind the song Amazing Grace

  

For some this day of grace is filled with laughter and dreams, 

for others sorrow and the surrender of loved ones back to God.

One funeral today is for a seven-year-old boy,

another for a beloved daddy

Will you join in praying for God's comfort to loved ones who remain?

January-land

Time rushes through you like blue ribbon unfurled

Your field blooms white, spiked with sparse, spectral tree

A moonlit night strung twixt reality

And hunger’s Barmecidal Other World

You are a feather that wafts hither-yon

Soft as the snowflake on guttural gale

Leaving no footprints you wander the pale

Ghost-colored gardens of sepulchral dawn

You gild earth’s coat with heaven’s falling stars

Your laughter sparkles and covers her girth

With diamonds and broken glass slippers; your mirth

Runs over silent, soldered river-bars

Quietness quivers, your fingers incite

Shivers, strain from a beggar’s violin

Steals our breath like ice-kisses on skin

Cold Casanova, you vex yet delight

…where Time rushes through you; a wild blue strand

Borne on the breath of a white afternoon

 Glimmering heath beneath gold wreath of moon

Blustering ballad, January-land

© Janet Martin

  Can you believe it?! 

There are only ten more days left of the first month of 2016!

Didn't we just do this?!