How Sacred Is The Place...

Sitting At The Feet Of Jesus

How sacred is the place
Where earth and heaven meld
Where in the Saviour’s kind embrace
Hope’s heart and mind are held

How comforting to flee
To I AM’s mercy-seat
And overcome the enemy
While kneeling at His feet

How gentle is His Voice
How patient is his ear
Even in sorrow we rejoice
To know that He is near

How righteous is His law
His judgments true and just
How sweet is worship’s humble awe
How secure is our trust

How faithful is His Word
Through faith alone revealed
Where in communion with the Lord
Hope’s heart and mind are healed

How sacred is the place
Where earth and Heaven meet
As we, because of Mercy's grace
Can fall down at His feet

To shield us from torment
As Satan's legions flee
Where He who is omnipotent
Sets us upon His knee

 

 © Janet Martin

 

2 Thess.2:16-17

 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, 

who by grace has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope,

encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good word and deed.

Not Gone Too Soon...(a letting-go-of-August medley)

 

 

A hint of blush begins to push
Through limelight plumes and sedum bush
Bloom’s hearty grip begins to slip
And yield to nature’s leadership
Where morning pours quadrillion stars
To dazzle heatwave-weathered bars
Where crickets never sleep but keep
A constant rhythm of cheep-cheep-cheep
Where orchards bend with dividend
Where minnow-tickled shallows wend
Where gardens brim with harvest hymn
And humbled thankful hearts join in
With flat tone of cicada’s drone
And raucous crow and blue heron
Where peach-juice drips from chins and lips
And sweetens tender farewell-trips
With sighs that find in ties that bind
The present to paths, echo-lined
The common ground where sight and sound
Is eternally summer-bound
In spite of hints in amber tints
And early, rebel russet glints
Among the sheen of laughing green
Ruled, like we, by a Hand unseen
Nay, kindly held while moments meld
Into a Song of Season Felled
*While cellars fill as seed-pods spill
The perfect timing of God’s will

© Janet Martin

*While hazy noon like cello-tune
Serenades Something/Summer gone too soon
Was originally the last two lines but something didn’t feel ‘right’
So I let it simmer a bit as I began the day’s duties rife with seasonal delights
And suddenly I knew what was missing…my summer-heart's surrender to God’s perfect timing!

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