Here's To Us (life's students)

 How swift those years when problems could be solved with a cuddle and kiss!

When houses were made out of shoe boxes without mortgages,

and dreams didn't need dollars...

(we're cleaning out closets and going through things that have been stored away for quite a while)

In ‘parenting’ one of the hardest tests for us is stepping back
as live-and learn begins, in our adult children
the grueling courses that we ourselves had/have…

 As we learn

Action=consequence,

Faith is hard and full of unanswered questions.
( Faith is the substance of things hoped for)

Numbers don’t lie

That happiness is not found in things

That pride goes before destruction.

That love is not always enough

That life really is short no matter how long it is!

That the small things are the big things 

That everyone eventually needs the Part that turns 'I' to 'we' 

That this too shall pass

That nothing takes the place of a kind word and helping hand.

Holding precedes the letting go

Joy is always hinged to sorrow

AND SO MUCH MORE!

So wherever we are in our live-and-learn courses
 here’s hoping we all seek direction/instruction
 from Someone who sees the whole picture,
while we still see 'through a glass darkly before face-to-face'

Here’s to the learning that we are all earning

Credits and scores never tendered to page

Here’s to hope’s reaches while time always teaches

We are all students no matter our age

Here’s to the pupil of passion or scruple

Stunned by the factors beyond our control

Here’s to a ledger without an eraser

Only God’s grace can absolve and console

Here’s to the dawning of our keep on ‘on-ing’

Never give up in spite of kicks and stings

Here’s to the scholar of dream-dust or dollar

Happiness happens in love’s simplest things

Here’s to the wedding of moment’s soft-threading

Past-present-future’s determined outcome

Here’s to the holding that precedes the folding

That seals the tally of Time’s total sum

© Janet Martin

February...

do you notice the heart in the above frost-fretwork?! sweet!

You paint the windows with feathered abandon

Frost field and fell with soft yellow and blue

One day a wild thing untethered and random

The next a stunning still-life avenue  

You mark the hour with cotton-ball flowers

Pummel with pillows a landscape at rest

You spark a sonnet with snow-stenciled bowers

Steal our breath with beauty’s brumal best

You draw us nearer to that dear exodus

When the bud breaks beneath Time’s pulsing push

You are the shearer of woolly white stratus

Tucking the earth beneath dazzling plush hush

You make the miser forget about money

If but for a moment, with geysers of gold

Your five-star meal of fresh-baked bread and honey

Makes us feel happy, whether young or old

You ready us for love’s headier romance

Highlights and low-blows, a mixed company

You form a frigid mosaic with moments

Warmed by a kettle-song’s afternoon tea

© Janet Martin

Evaluating The Bare Facts

 So much to tempt the palette on life's buffet!

How does one choose?!

Ah, yes! By who one serves.

Joshua 24:14
Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: 

and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, 

and in Egypt; 

and serve ye the LORD.

STUNNING sky-show to start the day/week!

Fitness, fashion, food, fame, riches

What is our pursuit?

Choice is like the thread that stitches

Action to the fruit

Passion, penance, prudence, pleasure

Ah, what potent seed

Motive unfolds into measure

Of our word and deed

Fancy’s folly, worship’s wonder

What do we applaud?

One last breath will cast asunder

Everything but God

© Janet Martin

Forge On, Fellow-Follower

Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, 

before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say,

 "I find no pleasure in them"--
Eccles.12:1

Christians are under attack worldwide but forge on, fellow-follower of Jesus,

if God is for us who can be against us?! Rom.8:31

Forge on, the framework of today will fill with what we do and say

The things that test this rebel clay nobody can foresee

But take heart, all who trust the name of He who bore our guilt and shame

In spite of what heretics claim; God WAS, IS and WILL BE

His Word, infallible and sure will keep the believer secure

And help the runner to endure the race until the end

Do not despair, the oaths of they who do not follow or obey

Are in fear of the judgement day, so pray and pray, my friend

Forge on, dear fellow-follower of He who is Deliverer

Defender and the succour-er of all who by faith, trust

Be not afraid, love will not fail no matter what storms may assail

Until death lowers the dark veil that returns dust to dust

…forge on, the flesh that cups the soul where none but God maintains control

Will not escape the sacred goal (not even atheists)

Remember, every knee will bow and every tongue confess Him, wow,

Then we should pay attention now, ere Silver Cord untwists 

 

© Janet Martin

Remember him--before the silver cord is severed,
and the golden bowl is broken;
 before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
and the wheel broken at the well,

Eccles.12:6

Braving Beauty (with a pen)

Malcolm Guite expresses perfectly in the video and poem above what many of us feel...

Sometimes the poet feels inept to walk where former poets stepped

To paint with meager ink and pen the beauty of life’s loves again

For how, when masters of the art have stunned the bottom of the heart

Can I be brave enough to try to pen the prose of earth and sky

But even as I contemplate the reasons I should deviate

From trampled paths of profound speech I cannot quell the urge to reach

Toward what begs to be retold to we not here in days of old

Where perhaps one with fledgling wings will feel the joy a poem brings

And fear will hear hope whisper ‘try’ as trust propels her to the sky

Where all of this would never be without the bliss of poetry

To cheer the way not bound to sod that ultimately leads to God

© Janet Martin