A Bitty Hope-For-The-New Year Ditty

Despair can snare us in its noose

And disappointment apprehends

The dream once care-free and footloose

Hardship and heartache’s grip befriends

The prayers we pray;  Ah, here the span

That supersedes our deepest hurt

For God is always greater than

The plans surrendered to time’s dirt

And He will not forsake our plight  

In spite of our blind-eyed chase

Into the wayward way of sight

That does not steal us from Love’s grace

© Janet Martin

Master-pieces

God creates no desolation

Winter’s tree, a lovely gray

Nature’s each season-creation

Beautiful in its own way

God excites our warped perception

Startles sight with snow-traced limb

Where the Author of perfection

Strews Master-pieces of Him

© Janet Martin

With Winsome Weight of Moments...

Ho, the winsome weight of moments

Tips time’s spectrum of thin air

Pours to quiet deep of midnight

Morning’s unmarred thoroughfare

Unattainable its flicker

After it passes away

Synchronized, Taker and Giver

Fashions from old dark, new day

…like an ephemeral river

Constant, its wake-waning tide

Where time's winsome wake of whispers

Leads us to life’s other side

War and peace borne on its murmur

Winter, summer’s silver breath

With the winsome weight of moments

Amalgamates life and death

...like the soft descent of snowflake

Singular until it lands

Moments fade into the framework

Of Forever's outstretched hands

© Janet Martin

Years From Now

Happy 2nd day of 2017!

Ah, years from now we’ll speak of how these were the days of such and such

And marvel at the changeless ways time changes everything we touch

And years from now we’ll look back and revisit what we not yet know

Where we are ever at the mercy of God’s love and season-flow

Dusk’s benediction soon will fold the hold of this new day to rest

Where it seems we are always at the beck and call of east to west

Goodnight, goodnight, good morning, oh, and off we go to work and school

While morning slips to noon and noon to twilight’s pink and purple pool

Our guesswork often falls far short of what God has in mind for us

Where faith and fear are rivals warring while we pray or fret and fuss

And, years from now when we speak of days lived and loved and always lost

We will, like those before us learn the difference twixt price and cost

…where years from now God still will BE, hope’s confidante and confidence

and all who trust in Him will still find peace and death’s deliverance

For, years from now, in spite of what we talk about, doubtless is this;

The God from the beginning will still be the faithful God that IS

The one thing we can depend on is He beyond time’s number chart

Greater than anything we fathom yet Keeper of human heart

Then, though we cannot know what, years from now will fill yon When

One thing we do; the God that was and is will be the same, amen

© Janet Martin

 They will perish, but you remain;
    they will all wear out like a garment.
Like clothing you will change them
    and they will be discarded. 

 But you remain the same,
    and your years will never end.

Psalm 102:26-27 

 Every good and perfect gift is from above,
coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights,
who does not change like shifting shadows.

James 1:17

A Blessed Continuance...an ABC Poem

A new year waits

Behind us, barred gates; before us open doors

Change comes through courage purposed-prayed

Do it!

Embrace time’s mores

Farewell to old, hello to new

God’s grace grants second chance

Here-now is like an avenue

Inviting us to dance

Jaded and cast, is the year past

Kiss it good-bye and then

Look to the love of God; He gives

Mercy for dreams again

Night turns to morning while we drowse

Our track-record, though grim

Persuades hope’s nature to arouse

Quixotic lands within  

Reminding us how God imbues

Surrendered sighs with joy

Time’s tried benevolence renews

‘Until’ with faith; ahoy

Vesper and daybreak ebbs and flows

With rose and thorny cares

X-cellent is He that bestows

Yes and no to our prayers

Zeal refurbishes gray with gold as the New Year succeeds the Old

© Janet Martin

Hello 2017!

Time's Thing Called Years...a repost

 A Re-post today...busy times. A new one tomorrow maybe?:)

Wishing all of you a blessed New Year!

Her garb is sheer where hindsight’s aptitude

Can better tell the wherefore of her stance

The apple of her eye is the romance

Of Rembrandts' rendered to past’s solitude

And what we did or didn’t do, joy-grief

A tug-of-war within the human breast

As the old year dons her eternal rest

And we hail the unknown to hone Belief

Where the threshold of morrow soon will spill

A canvas pure as God to earthy will

Thought’s time-engrafted reach is far too small

Though we, with fumbling talk try to explain

What mortal knowledge cannot full-attain

…to understand the Giver of it all

Who reigns beyond the tick and tock of clocks

And what we deem as old or new but grace

Unchanging and unfailing; human race

Grapples with strings and moment-soldered locks

Where consequence is the certain capstone

Of everything that ever we have done

With scathing ignorance we hit ‘repeat’

In spite of good intention how we fall

Thus grace alone is our utter all

As old and new mingle; a bittersweet

Vintage of retrospect; then love is blind

And kinder than it was when we were young

And surer of the words upon our tongue

Before the new grew older and the mind

Became a landscape riddled with smile-tears

Accumulated in Time’s thing called Years

© Janet Martin