Compositions...(from many a common afternoon)

above photo credit Emily Curry; used with permission from tot's mom

below photo credit;  Victoria Martin

 

The passage to the past is strewn

With many a common afternoon

The melodies that echoes play

Composed on bars of day-to-day

As seasons spill the ilk of hymns

Where beauty with the broken brims

As hurt and hope of high and low

Composes from wonder and woe

The words that learn to be more kind

Where awe and angst are intertwined

Composing haunting harmonies

Like rain that falls through August trees

Where leaves like large, lush platters splay

But cannot hold the silver lay

That drips and slips into the earth

The tomb of death, the womb of birth

While we stand on its teeming sod

And contemplate the ways of God

That none can thwart or circumvent

As we escort with wild lament

The mercy that flows faithfully

To the plain likes of you and me

Where opening to curtain close

Can’t help but tenderly compose

A humble hymn of gratitude

For many an afternoon, soft-strewed

As moments so casually cast

Compose the passage to the past

Where none can hold for long the part

That writes the song that tunes the heart

That pray, before its anthems fade

We heard the music as it played

© Janet Martin

So disappointed this pic blurred.
I handed Jim the camera while I was doing dishes after Melissa's birthday supper on Saturday
before we drove her back to the city. He isn't up to all the tricks of my only-half-working camera...
but I treasure this one all the same of the girls hanging out on the porch laughing and talking and talking and talking

We are not shaped by our future, but by our past which is shaped by our present!
Makes the moment we are in feel kinda sacred, doesn't it?!!


Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my rock and my Redeemer.
Psalm 19:14

Balancing Burdens...

Go Light Your World

To bear the weight of the woes of this world
Would drain us of all hope of happiness
To dwell on the darkness where Light unfurled
Beckons, is to miss God’s kind faithfulness

To suffer we must; but to hurt alone
Would surely be hardship’s most bitter part
The Lord does not leave us Comfortless, no
Though this world’s sorrows can shatter the heart

Worry is not the same thing as concern
Worry frets anxiously; futile and hard
Concern will caution, encourage, discern
Stand like a strong, loyal soldier on guard

Lord, help us daily Thy grace to employ
To bear life’s burdens with courage and joy

© Janet Martin 

 

1 Pet.5:6-7

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, 

so that in due time He may exalt you.  

7Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you

No Labour Too Small

And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water 

because he is a disciple,
truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.”

Matt.10:42

The high and holy calling that each person is born to
Can sometimes be lost sight of in life’s day-to-day ado
Then help us Lord, to search your perfect law of liberty
And serve each other by your grace with true humility

There is no task too lowly when we labour for the Lord
And heartily do what we ought, according to His word
Then let us never dare to sigh with bold ingratitude
But ever seek to honor each morning’s mercy renewed

None knows the day or hour when we will be called away
Therefore we ought to live as if each day could be the day
And consider in love how we can serve each other here
So much to do, so little time before He will appear

The freedom we are called to binds us with the law of love
It does not grant permission to indulge desire with ‘stuff’
But rather sets in place a blessed joy for one and all
That when we serve Him by His grace no labour is too small


© Janet Martin

James 1:25
But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it,
and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, 

this one will be blessed in what he does.

 

A word of encouragement to the bed-ridden...

Bottom Line:

When we labour for the Lord nothing we do is in vain.

When we don't labour for Him, everything we do is in vain.

When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder

Sum-Thing to Think About

Before today is 'congealed'
I hope these tomatoes will be sealed

in jars as marinara sauce!

The future cannot change the past
Its tableau set and sealed
The momentum of moments cast
And instantly congealed

Like shadows on a field, futile
To try to grasp its form
As a pageant of moments file
Into an echo-storm

Where we are always caught between
What was and what will be
While present always paints a scene
For bygones gallery

How momentous the momentum
Of moments as they chime
And ever seamlessly become
The sum of a lifetime


© Janet Martin

Always, Still So Much...Majesty

 Be still and know that I am God.

Psalm 46:10 

     

So much brokenness, so much to fill an ocean with prayer for the cares we suffer, but still...

There’s always still so much to thrill before our very eyes
So much that spills God’s majesty for us to recognize
The earth is like a gallery with masterpieces poured
To hills and fields, to sky and sea in favours from our Lord

There’s always still (in spite of gut-wrenching reasons to wail)
So much to author wonder from The One who does not fail
With so much to discover that we still have not perceived
Lent from the Soul's sweet Lover lest our logic is deceived

There’s always still so much that waits to teach us how to love
As we behold with awe, the earth and its fullness thereof
It sparks within the poet’s veins a sob, a throb, a flame
For all the hymns not written yet that ache to praise His name

There’s always still a better reason to keep on than quit
For what may seem like endings may be a poem half-writ
As soft as thistle seed that wafts across the dusky scrim
His still small voice is pleading for our confidence in Him

There’s always still so much to live for if we trust His care
Ah, we must all choose between living hope and dark despair
Where there is always still so much to take us by surprise
As we behold His majesty before our very eyes

 
...for there is always still so much to rebuff ready doubt
That still small voice within, a world of wonderment without
And there is always still so much to notice and applaud
Where we can never comprehend the majesty of God

The river, like a mirror reflects ribbons of yon sky
The mead, a sanctuary for wild bloom and butterfly
The distant hill, a ladder that we climb with longing eyes
For our help comes from above this footing of demise

…where there is always still so much to acknowledge with awe
In spite of all the brokenness that tests love’s vexing law 

His whisper will unfold the bud He instills with a loom
That leaves us speechless as The Weaver unravels the Bloom



© Janet Martin 

Who is this Weaver?

The Crucial Undertaking...of Choice

The choices we make are the result of what/who we believe...

Want’s ways and means are wily when it comes right down to it
Where choices that we make expose what we suppose well-hid
For better or for worse we prove love’s fundamental vow
By what we choose and how we use the sacredness of Now

The voice of choice speaks louder than the words we boldly spout
It tells the truth in language that leaves little room for doubt
For as a man thinks so he is, where what we dearly love
Without a word the evidence of choice will surely prove

How foolish to believe that we can outsmart consequence
Or concoct ways and means that disguise disobedience
The Word of God when hungered for and fed upon will prove
By choices that we make who we most worship, trust and love

This crucial undertaking offers countless ways and means
…satisfy Self or honour God; there are no in-betweens
And though we may console that prick of conscience with a tart
The choices that we make expose the person of the heart

It is not hard to sweet-talk caution into Good Excuse
Where recompense is always hinged to the action we choose
And if we are not keenly tuned to He who never lies
Then we are perfect prey for wolves dressed up in sheep’s disguise

God who is rich in Mercy is not mocked; His judgements just
His ways past finding out (unlike the likely likes of us)
Then lest we fool ourselves into believing the wrong voice
We ought evaluate love by examining Choice

 
The aftermath of Choice will yield Happiness or Regret
Do not despair for we stand where Choice is not finished yet
And though we live and die by the choices we make, Today
Is like a table laden with Mercy’s fresh Choice-buffet

© Janet Martin

 

 
“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done,"
and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done."
All that are in Hell, choose it.
Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.
No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.
Those who seek find.
Those who knock it is opened.”

C.S.Lewis The Great Divorce 

Joshua 24:14-15

“Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. 

Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 

¹⁵ And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve,

 whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River,

 or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. 

But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

 

*quoted in the above message 

the lyrics of the song below...

 

Epitaph by King Crimson

 

 

Lyrics

The wall on which the prophets wrote
Is cracking at the seams
Upon the instruments of death
The sunlight brightly gleams
When every man is torn apart
With nightmares and with dreams
Will no one lay the laurel wreath
When silence drowns the screams

Confusion will be my epitaph
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it, we can all sit back and laugh
But I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying
Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying
Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Between the iron gates of fate
The seeds of time were sown
And watered by the deeds of those
Who know and who are known
Knowledge is a deadly friend
If no one sets the rules
The fate of all mankind, I see
Is in the hands of fools

The wall on which the prophets wrote
Is cracking at the seams
Upon the instruments of death
The sunlight brightly gleams
When every man is torn apart
With nightmares and with dreams
Will no one lay the laurel wreath
When silence drowns the screams

Confusion will be my epitaph
As I crawl, a cracked and broken path
If we make it, we can all sit back and laugh
But I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying
Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying
Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying
Crying, crying
Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying
Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying
Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying
Crying

August Aria

through spicy-sweet sweltering afternoon 

to blue brooding breezy cool-down dusk 

to mist-kissed morning, 

this poem percolated...

 

 

 

Daylight ebbs from earth-moored skylines like an ocean at low tide
Colour drains from yonder welkin and the rolling countryside
Dusk, a navy flannel blanket fringed with pink till edges fade
Gathers up the world in whispers poured through shushing poplar-shade
While with staid staccato gusto, tireless crickets serenade

Summer trembles as if sensing someone soon to take her place
Dawn waits to endear with echoes; and to kiss earth’s upturned face
Shiver, quiver, swelter, sweaters; winter, spring, summer then fall
Like a river-song that ripples in a wordless madrigal
Shadows stretching taller, taller till blue twilight snuffs them all

Nature weaves Her rending ribbon through the leaves, still lush and green
But with here and there a glimmer of gold rebel tucked between
While we wield brave fronts and savour Beauty; let it steal our breath
While wild lilies lavish landscapes with an inkling of a wreath
While we try to find our footing on frail flower-tides beneath

Then dawdle if you dare, cavort and swaddle Must with wanderlust
Because none in the end can thwart the oracle of dust to dust
Ah, settle on a sweep of grass; set sail across noon’s wind-tossed sheaves
Before its sparkle ebbs from earth-moored skylines to yon starry eaves
Before dusk drapes its flannel over shoulders stooped with fallen leaves


© Janet Martin