This Place of Grace...

 Inspired in part by today's devotion

  from this book

This place of grace where loaner loans

And wind moans blue through winter’s bones

And nothing but the love of God

For right and wrong this fight atones

This place of forecasts, often wrong

Of fumbling faith and off-key song

Of think-I-cans  and change of plans

And far too soon sudden 'so-long'

Where want and need are intertwined

Like bloom and seed or heart and mind

And we are all part of The Fall

That should make us more meek and kind

…and blinder to each other’s fault

As we scavenge time’s common vault

Of aches and pains and daisy-lanes

And lesser gods we oft exalt

Where we of mercy’s patient lease

Oft rob ourselves of perfect peace

For we forget the awesome debt

Paid so that life will never cease

This place of grace and needy needs

Where warrior wars and pray-er pleads

Is held by He of sound decree  

Whose boundless love nothing exceeds

© Janet Martin

Romans 8:35-39

 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

 Shall trouble or distress or persecution

 or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

As it is written:

“For Your sake we face death all day long;

we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, 

neither angels nor principalities, 

neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,

neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, 

will be able to separate us from the love of God 

that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Isa.55:8-9

 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord. 

 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

An Urgent Evaluation

These ties that bind time’s age to skin

Will break; its cage-bars melt within

Where Soul abides, when eventides

And morning skies will cease

Then feud with foe and feast with friend

With life’s final exhale will end

Ah, who can dare to face death’s lair

Without Salvation’s peace?

This born-of-woman, full-of-care

This need and greed anointed stair

Lest we forget leads to the Yet

That no one can refuse

When all we have will disappear

Save the Account of Days Spent Here

Then why not live to give-give-give

For what have we to lose?

When we no longer bow the head

To thank the Lord for daily bread

When hope and trust and dust-to-dust

Must’s destiny unveils

Then, as these earth-ties deliquesce

Into Forever’s endlessness

Pray we don’t wait to call too late

On love that never fails

© Janet Martin

Do you ever stop to wonder how it will be

When face to face, we shall see?!!

 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror;
then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part; then I shall know fully,
 even as I am fully known.

1 Cor.13:12

Lay of Day-to-Day...and 11mo. grand-baby pics:)

It lolls in bowls of farm-fresh eggs

Or apples sliced for sauce

It hums its hymns in leafless limbs

Stripped of glossy green floss

It hugs with mugs of coffee, tea

It anchors hope in prayer

It wanders through dusk’s yonder blue

Where starlight spins a stair

It tilts our heads to catch the lilt

Of little baby-coo

It turns our hearts to works of art

With wonder ever new

It wakes within an aching sob

That love alone inspires

Spaghetti-pots, forget-me-not

Can kindle holy fires

It draws, with laws of letting go

Keenness to what we hold

It slides sock feet across a street

Of Bygone’s tempered gold

It chases grace across a sky

Soon snuffed of afternoon

Come darling, let’s forget to fret

Let’s lick the mixing-spoon

…it employs joy in scattered toys

Where girls and boys play, roam

It is the lay of day-to-day

And precious home sweet home

© Janet Martin

...and grandson is 11 mos.!!!

this last photo stirred the song below in my heart

 

Ethereal Essence

"I'm never quite sure what I feel the most,"  I remarked to Victoria last night as we decorated the tree. "gladness or sadness at the haste of another year."

All the tree-decorators have disappear but one and we both feel it...

...so we put on Charlie Brown while we decorate and forget to be sentimental for a bit;-)

...here's a bitty ditty to sentimentality

Time tumbles through blue, wind-tossed tress

Tempest of smile and tear

It shoulders grief and happiness

In days, a week, a year

Sometimes its chimes make us feel lost

And sometimes quite at ease

It stuns us with a hidden cost

Paid off in memories

It weighs us down yet lifts us up

It tweaks and tips our chins

To catch the nectar from a cup

That spills in groans and grins

It tracks across mom’s fresh-washed floors

It smudges glossy panes

Then slips through soundless, swinging doors

In ‘so long, mom’ refrains

It smells of dust and frost and mud

It tells a tale, my dear

Of flower that falls from the bud

In days, a week, a year

© Janet Martin

Of Almost-Snow

An air of expectancy groans through nature's bare bones today...

 ...as if one can almost hear Old Man Winter's approach!

Lovers of  'brooding landscapes' better take a long, last look according to the weather-forecast

The air is poked with bare oak branch

And stoked with ‘almost snow’

Across the yard brittle leaves dance

In footloose tic-tac-toe

The land is primed for white that spills

To deck the halls brown-gray

Glad to be clad in sledding-hills

And snow angels at play

The far-off ridge broods blue and bare

It lures the poet’s gaze

To touch the tremble in its stare

And clutch time’s ebbing ways

The earth is like a tambourine

Where tuneless jingles shake

The wind, a minstrel, wild and green

Rattles the balsam brake

…and from each window eager-eyed

A world of children wait

To greet the whirling, twirling tide

As winter opes its gate

© Janet Martin