Evaluating the (Not-So) Hidden Motives

I have no regular posting time these days.
But, often if I have a poem on the go then kiddo's nap-time
allows a little window of opportunity to share it 😊

I couldn't really decide what photo relates to this poem
 so I chose some that showcase my motivation to plant a garden/zinnias!

What motivates us to the means

Of what we give for what we get

What drives us like half-mad machines

Toward the goals not conquered yet

What in the world makes us most glad

Most satisfied or deeply sad

If God stripped us of skin and bone

Who would He find on our heart’s throne?

What spins the wheels of want and will

What pleasure bids us suffer pain

What feeds our hunger for a thrill

Is it true love or selfish gain?

Sometimes when discontentment taunts

We ought to double-check our wants

And weigh the breath of would-be-boast

With who or what we cherish most

What fires our rise-and-shine
Or would we rather not confess
What drives us to the finish-line
Or fuels dreams of happiness
What, when the coin of time is spent
(and this is A Most Certain Thing)
Will who/what we valued with its Cent
Make worth the payday death will bring

© Janet Martin

How many of us absolutely live with the verse below as our utmost value?

What is more,
 I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth
 of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,
 for whose sake I have lost all things.
 I consider them garbage,
 that I may gain Christ

Phil.3:8 NIV

...or, the KJV takes it even beyond the word 'garbage'!

 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss
for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord:
for whom I have suffered the loss of all things,
and do count them but dung,
that I may win Christ,

Phil.3:8 KJV

Of Vows Renewed

  

Lest we forget

Let's live as if

Today was life's final amen

Lest we forget

Let's love as if

We might not ever meet again~

 © Janet Martin

Remembering those who lost loved ones and those lost 18 years ago!

 

 

 

On Giving Thanks

 It's the Time of year when Thanks Giving reasons multiply by bloom-lent bushel!

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

1 Thess.5:18 KJV

Because giving thanks is no spectator sport

And because Christ died once for all

No one has no reason to worship the Lord

Who authored and honours Love’s call

Because giving thanks changes complaint to praise

And makes us more humbly attuned

To blessing and beauty that showers our days

To mercy, each morning renewed

Because giving thanks spears the darkness with light

And touches our sorrows with joy

No one has no reason to count with all might

What Self-centered want would destroy

Because giving thanks is not simply a whim

But a Love-anointed command

No one has no reason to not give to Him

Glad worship of head, heart and hand

© Janet Martin

Fount of Faithful Mercy...

 Sometimes certain repetitions in life can seem a little monotonous!
...others, never! (like that first cup of coffee each morning)😄

Aren't you EVER SO THANKFUL God's steadfast love and mercy are new every morning

and He never wearies or grows tired no matter how often we repeat ourselves to Him ...

The fount of faithful mercy fills yon vault and overflows

It sweeps from boundless deeps in an ocean of gold and rose

Where patient Goodness that employs man’s sorrow-joys once more

Does not grow weary but draws from love’s everlasting store

…as season unto season He delights expectant eyes

And startles fumbling reason with repetition’s surprise

Where oft we feel like strangers in life’s same yet changing place

While guzzling from a fountain rife with God's unchanging grace

…and drawing from His love often without much thought at all

To Who He gave to save us from the curse after The Fall

Still, Patient Goodness intercedes in spite of human flaw

On man’s helpless behalf He pleads with grace greater than law

…for law alone can never save us from the wrath to come

By grace through faith the soul is saved, then sing a joyful song

Where founts of faithful mercy spill to fill the heart with praise

For Patient Goodness that abides until the end of days

© Janet Martin

 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 

 For in Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death.

For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh,
God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man, as an offering for sin. 

  He thus condemned sin in the flesh,
so that the righteous standard of the law might be fulfilled in us,
who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 

Romans 8:1-4 

This post was also inspired in part by today's 1-minute Bible Love-note

Of September...

In russet hints it tints the tress

That broke and stoked spring’s happiness

It gleams in streams of goldenrod

And jars beaming with garden-laud

It stirs in blurs of burnished plume

That furnished earth with bud, then bloom

It drops in orchard thoroughfares

Plop-plop of plums, apples and pears

It croons in noon’s less savage heat

In cricket’s thinning tweet-tweet-tweet

In corn-rows rigid infantry

More brittle than they used to be

It bulges from dawn’s dew-pearled port

Indulges the spectator’s sport

Where wonder and worship entwine

Like tendrils from the pole-bean vine

It throbs in musky, dusky dust

And sobs in secret wanderlust

It folds the day in molten hues

Yet holds at bay certain adieus

It twinkles in wild aster stars

And other buttered, bumbled bars

And scrawls upon a tousled wall

Little love-notes of Almost Fall

© Janet Martin

Middle-age Melodrama

 Blame this one on the side effects of September-jazz...

Sweet-taunted by the music of

Those days gone by, these days I love

Soft-torn too oft it seems to me

Twixt lyric and the melody

Season and reason have their say

Flattery’s high has had its day

I’m too old to be lured by it

But too young to not 'want' a bit

Time tugs the strings of poet-hearts

I hug the sting that it imparts

Where rhymes are sometimes hard to please

They climb bars made of memories

After, is like the ruins where

Laughter-dream-drunk, I walked on air

Until youth’s fickle fantasy

Yielded to Truth’s reality

And all those things ‘I never would’

Become the things ‘I wish I could’

Half-haunted by the music of

Those days gone by, these days I love

© Janet Martin