Neighbors All

No one tries to be a failure

Sometimes eyes deceive our thought

Then we fall and need each other

Neighbors all, in need of love

No one wants to be a failure

Everybody needs someone

Maybe if we help each other

No one needs to feel alone

No one, no one is a failure

Sometimes eyes can’t see it all

Everybody needs a shoulder

To lean on in case we fall

We are all part of God's promise

We all make mistakes, oh my

We are all still works in progress

In great need of one more try
We are all still works in progress
In great need of you and I

© Janet Martin

The Greatest Commandment
(Deuteronomy 6:1-19; Matthew 22:34-40)

Now one of the scribes had come up and heard their debate. 

Noticing how well Jesus had answered them, he asked Him, 

“Which commandment is the most important of all?”

Jesus replied, “This is the most important: 

‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God 

with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 

The second is this: 

‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

No other commandment is greater than these.”

Mark 12:28-31 

Who is our neighbor? 

Of Unfailing Love

Pray we do not put trust in these

Intimacies that men applaud

But ever let our full joy be

In salvation that comes from God

Evil will not triumph, oh no,

It cannot, does not know the One

Whose grace it is whereby we go

Through Jesus Christ, His only Son

Confusion vexes and destroys

Its noise of vaunt nothing can prove

Sing hallelujah and rejoice

In God and His unfailing love

© Janet Martin

  

I sent this song to my friend Diane this morning. 

Will you pray for her once more as she struggles with challenges that cancer brings with it?

While we're at it why don't we pray for everyone struggling with these challenges because God/ Yahweh knows who they are even if we don't. 

 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, 

the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love 

with those who love him and keep his commandments, 

to a thousand generations,

Deut.7:9

Forthwith of Days

Dawn bares the haste of Time’s ‘forthwith of days’

…sigh-stippled landscapes with skies intersect

Want, work and wonder their portions dissect

Keening our gaze to life’s quick-stricken ways

Nuance of circumstance, yesterday’s glance

Tethers our willfulness with naught but this;

Tick-by-tock offers and dust-to-dust kiss

Mirth and melancholy’s death-deigned romance

Music and monotone, laughter and groan

Dawn bares Time’s latest affairs made of these;

Moments doffed, petered into memories

Moments soft-metered into Steppingstone

Pragmatic, ecstatic, emphatic We

Weather the ‘Whethers’ of love’s highs and lows

What waits where dawn awakes, only God knows

We nurse Man’s Curse immersed in His mercy

© Janet Martin

 Ps.12

 Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone;
    for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man.
² Everyone utters lies to his neighbor;
    with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.

³ May the Lord cut off all flattering lips,
    the tongue that makes great boasts,
⁴ those who say, “With our tongue we will prevail,
    our lips are with us; who is master over us?”

⁵ “Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan,
    I will now arise,” says the Lord;
    “I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”
⁶ The words of the Lord are pure words,
    like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
    purified seven times.

⁷ You, O Lord, will keep them;
    you will guard us from this generation forever.
⁸ On every side the wicked prowl,
    as vileness is exalted among the children of man.

Love's Souvenir

 (for all parents with loved ones moving out to return to school)

It is the color of August, bronze-burnished

It is the murmur of sky-high true blue

It is the whisper of hours relinquished

It is the longing in summer’s adieu

It is the almost touching of our fingers

It is the ache of a slow-breaking heart

It is the waft of soft echoes that linger

Where time dismantles its breath-taking art

It is the fading of flower-fringed fencerows

Petal-parts scattered on time’s avenue

It is a tug-of-heart flipside of hellos

It is love’s souvenir;  missing you

© Janet Martin

Melissa doesn't move until Sunday, 

but already I sense an immense missing-you ache...

The Thing That Counts

It’s not in the number of dollars we earn

Or in how much treasure we lay in store

The measure of pleasure in life’s return

Depends on Who we are doing it for

It’s not in whether skies are gray or blue

Or what this-or-that’s ultimatum will prove

The pleasure of all that we say and do

Depends, in the end, on its measure of love

How hollow the loveless laughter cold-rings

How shallow the self-aggrandizing toast

How lovely are life’s simple, common-place things

When love is the reason that matters most

© Janet Martin