For The Sake of Thorn and Rose, Poetry and Prose...

 

Why and How We Are Able...

Could we, without a God of grace

Be brave enough to face the foe

Or bear to drink life’s cup of woe

Or surrender when God says ‘no’?

Could we without a God of hope

Dare to embark on a new day

Where none but He can see the way

And we could not know what to pray?

 

Could we, without a God of love

Suffer life’s sorrows or its joy?

Or teach the tender girl or boy?

Or trust in what none can destroy?

Could we without a God of life

Begin to live or breathe at all?

How would we rise after we fall?

Or time be more than death’s dread pall?

Could we know grace, hope, love below

Without this One true God? No, no!

© Janet Martin

No Feckless Freefall...

© Janet Martin

 Psalm 139:16
Your eyes saw my unformed body; 

all the days ordained for me were written in your book 

before one of them came to be.

...and Pray

 Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"

John 20:28

Lest 

we  be

-come

A vic

-tim of 

Despair 

or doubt,

Anger 

or pride

We should look long...  With eyes closed on

The life we have...  Through He who died

And oft 

upon

Time’s 

sacred 

way, we

should 

bow 

down

And 

pray

And 

Pray

© Janet Martin

Ancient Revelation...

 Some days we struggle to accept the New View...

What has been is what will be,
    and what has been done is what will be done,
    and there is nothing new under the sun.

Eccles. 1:9

It is nothing new

This rise and shine

And toil and weep

And grin and share it

With the rest

Before we lay us

Down to sleep

And it is nothing new, the test

That tries the Thing

We thought we knew

Then realize

With humble sighs

And eyes, the wiser

For the view

Soft-rearranged

And changed because

The hand of time

Is never still

Where nothing new

Stuns me and you

With arguments

Of want and will

Because we are

Prone to the laws

Of human nature’s

Ancient ways

Where nothing new returns

Save gauze that

Holds the gift

Of a new day

© Janet Martin

 

another beautiful version of this song here

The Beauty of Begin Again

God takes brokenness 

and beneath His touch 

turns it into beauty... 

As the ice began to melt on Saturday, earth was over-taken by surreal beauty;

a glass world on a bronze backdrop...

We would be weary soon into love’s journey

Soon overtaken by trouble and pain

But for the mercy that comes with each morning

But for the beauty of Begin Again

We would be victims of longing’s long sorrow

Caught in a quagmire of briar and rain

But for the Hand that transforms each tomorrow

Into the beauty of Begin Again

We would be blinded by rubble and ruin

Bereft of joy where we stumble and strain

But for the wonder that wakens within us

As we bear witness to Begin Again

Love takes the pieces of plight we have shattered

Shapes from its brokenness, no seal of shame

But from the night as its starlight is scattered

Love lends the beauty of Begin Again

© Janet Martin