Today, More Than Word-play Melt-away

May today be more than 

prattle of word play

but rather a vison 

with a mission! 

(or is it mission with a vision😊)

Part of my mission today? window washing!!

(to clear the vision a bit😀)

Oh! and may the snow-melt continue!!

Yesterday morning-

-this morning!

As much as some of us enjoy word-play,

may today be much more!

Circumstance grants participants the chance to do our part

Compassion is a soldier that shoulders the faint of heart

Desire is a fire that requires dire care

Where altogether tethered, we weather its 'whether' (or not) share

Emotion is an ocean of devotion’s counterparts

Persuasion, the invasion of temptation’s subtle darts

Assumption is the gumption to conclude truth without facts

Pride is a deadly guide that flatters, lies, lures and distracts

Redemption is exemption from an awful debt we owed

Forgiveness the divineness of God’s grace to man bestowed

Belief, the capsheaf of achievement, arrogance undone

Salvation; liberation’s restoration through God’s Son

Poetry is the pottery from think-ink’s spinning wheel

Success is happiness with less rather than More’s appeal

Peace is release from fear, my dear, as trust hoists up its sail

With Hope, faith’s rope secured in promises that will not fail

Today is more than word-play on age-pages signed and sealed

Choice is a voice that needs no noise to have the heart revealed

Dawn is the spawn of opportunity’s brawn beckoning

Time is a stair we climb toward the Lord and reckoning

© Janet Martin

Bible Love Notes; The Time is Coming

Col.3:23-24

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, 

as working for the Lord, not for human masters, 

 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. 

It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

Happiness, Heaven-on-earth and Love

This poem was written with young parents in mind but

has something in it for us oldies too😉😄

(yes, it's muddy boots and wet-everything season!)

(because I do childcare some 'memories' stay quite fresh😅)

"Me? Trouble?!! 

How can you even think it?!"

It doesn’t always look like much; the noisy thick of it

Can spill and spread in such a way to make you ‘sick’ of it

Yes, you confess the mess is often quite more-than-enough

It doesn’t look like happiness, heaven-on-earth or love

You slip on the spaghetti that your darling toddler flung

Next week you’ll find one dried to the ceiling or a chair wrung

The toy-box you replenished at Christmas with eager joy

Is like a decoration ignored by dear girl and boy

Between lost socks-boots-mittens, you find scribbles on the wall

Where budding artists practiced while you answered a phone call

First signs of spring are tracked across the fresh-mopped kitchen floor

‘Enjoy these Best of Days’ says ‘Mrs. Old’ who lives next door

The sink is full of dishes while fridge and cupboard run bare

Baby is teething so you do not have patience a hand to spare

You sure could use the nap your youngster refuses to take

It would work such sweet wonders for your arms, back and headache

The bills are due, there are a few you had not counted on

Thank God for work and by His grace you’ll keep chugging along

…where Something steals your breath as only Little Tot can do

And you forget all but the precious face looking at you

Yes, it can feel like quite a fight, the messy ‘stick’ of it

Keeps you from understanding quite, the tender quick of it

But some day you’ll look back and see (like we did) sure enough

That this really is/was happiness, heaven-on-earth and love

(Optional ending)

(…the point to this ditty I guess is, whether young or old

In the middle of muddle-cuddle-mess-blessed hug-and-hold

Or past the place of youth and grace as we embrace ‘what’s next’

And wonder at the mirror-face, half-laughing and half-vexed

…we ought to try to take and make the best of where we are

Nobody needs to be perfecto or a super-star

But learn to count the beauties and the blessings one by one

Because no matter where we are, where we are is soon gone!)

© Janet Martin

Of Gray and Gold

 

At day break gold put on quite a glow 

before gray lowered/glowered to extinguished its show

Soon, should we live to see it through

Dusk will obscure dawn’s virgin view

Soon time will gather gray and gold

As chimes of tick and tock are tolled

To bygone’s immutable mold

In words we say and deeds we do

As we look back then on today

At scenes that none can brush away

Will echo-fray we leave behind

Be patient, true, gentle and kind

With fellow-trave’lers first in mind

Where gold and gray tones interplay

We cannot see what waits to be

Where gates fling wide to set it free

On teeming tides of come-what-may

We sail toward the close of day

In ebbs and flows, now gold, now gray

While making history

© Janet Martin

After a gray shower passed through

the sun has returned,

 working its golden wonders once more!

Looks like cross-country skiing is running to an end for this season...hopefully!

As much as I enjoy it I would never choose it over an early spring!

Ecccles. 3:1-8

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens:

2 a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3 a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

6 a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

7 a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8 a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.

Me, with a basket of laundry to hang out

am glad for 'a time for gold'...

Little girl with a new, polka-dot umbrella, 

was wishing for 'a time for more gray plip-plop of raindrops'!

(it kinda looks like she might get her wish😊)

...looks like a true March gray-gold kaleidoscope kind of day today!

This Holy Hush...

'The poet’s heart within us craves the holy hush.'

This is the last line in yesterday's Daily Bread Devotion..

My oldest sister called around 8:00 to see if I had read it yet,

and if it inspired any writing at my end😀 (bless her heart)

I had read it a few hours earlier as a quick devotion 

before an early morning tots-arrival day etc. .Beautiful!

I tried to squirrel the sparks away hoping the iron (or ashes) wouldn't grow too cold...

This, the last paragraph in the devotional, felt a poem :

"Nature sometimes seizes 

our attention in ways 

we don’t like

. Regardless of what happens to us 

or what we observe around us, 

each moment—

magnificent, 

menacing, 

or mundane—

can inspire 

our worship. 

The poet’s heart 

within us craves 

the holy hush."

By Tim Gustafson

'Worship inspired by the ways Nature applies its brush'

The poet's heart within us craves creation's holy hush

Worship inspired by the ways Nature applies its brush

Where That which no one can annul is strange and sweetly drawn 

Toward Something Invisible This Holy Hush will spawn 

In woodland's deep, or break of day, or plush-prism snowfall

Or twilight as it tucks away the rush of beck and call

Or earth after autumn has stripped leaf-mirth from lofty limb

Or August nights stippled with cricket-choir's vibrant hymn

 

...or as we bask in waning winter's pools of golden sun

Where heaven tips a blue flask full of gardens, dream-dirt spun

Or after tot is fast asleep and childish noise subdued

Like the calm after storms that little girls and boys exude 

In the crook of a countryside brook-bank as we recline

Wooed by a wand of willow-frond or wild cucumber vine 

Or as we gaze at silver haze of stars on black backdrop

Or as we drink the winsome ink of rain-song's drip and plop

Or as we taste the brickle from a 'cicle, maple-sweet

Or as we dash with dusty splash through pastures in bare feet

Or as we pause beneath the gauze of apple-blossomed arc

Something we cannot quite explain ignites a sacred spark

The poet's heart within us craves This Holy Hush, God-bent

Worship whispers awe's spark into a blaze of wonderment

Where That which no one can annul is drawn with tender stare  

 Toward Someone Invisible, but also walking there 

 © Janet Martin

More Than a Birthday Poem...

Twenty years old!

How can it be?!

No more teenagers in the family!

We are all blessed by your kind, sweet and sunny personality!

God bless you, Dear Daughter, as you seek to honour Him

with your choices, hopes and dreams

This is more than a birthday poem

To wish you happiness

More than a toast to hopes and dreams

And their smiling success

More than sweet sentiment’s flourish

Of tender, loving care

This is more than a birthday wish

My dear, it is a prayer

A prayer, that He who has begun

His lovely work in you

Would always be the Faithful One

You trust to see it through

A prayer for God’s grace to bestow

Faith enough to proceed

Knowing for all we cannot know

He knows just what we need

This is a prayer for joy and peace

(for this is happiness)

A prayer that wisdom would increase

And with it, thankfulness

A prayer that life returns to you

The loveliness you give

That God will shine His face on you

For as long as you live

© Janet Martin

The Lord bless you and keep you;

25 The Lord make His face shine upon you,

And be gracious to you;

26 The Lord [a]lift up His countenance upon you,

And give you peace.” ’

Num.6: 24-26

Pure Delight's Promise

 

This wall-art was retired from one of the bedrooms to make room

for fresh décor, so I claimed it for an empty wall by the front door

 to read again and again to remind myself how joy may remain full!

Psalm 37:4

If we delight ourselves in He

Of boundless creativity

Who authored sky and sod and sea

With infinite authority

In He whose promises prevail

Whose love does not falter or fail

Who stands with us when storms assail

When mountains seem too sheer to scale

In He whose plan instills the seed

To sustain our physical need

But did for far more intercede

When from sin’s debt mankind was freed

…who became sin who knew no sin

Once and for all, an offering

Who saw the triumph death would bring

After the cross of suffering

If we delight ourselves in He

Who overthrew the enemy

And denied death its mastery

‘Ah grave, where is thy victory’

If we delight in He who gave

His Son, each one of us to save

So when we brave death’s sullen wave

Heaven, not hell will meet the grave

If delight in He whose art

Steals our breath and death’s cold smart

He will fulfill with joy, His part

In the desires of the heart

© Janet Martin

Delight in God- Charles Spurgeon

Because Time Flies...

This week I added two tots and an extra day to the childcare routine.

...as I repeat the weathered words-

Where did this last year go?!!

A year ago one of these tots was born,

then blink! 

she is one! and mom is back to work!

The wings that bear away the day 

Flash silver in the sun 

We from our heaps of frazzled fray 

And battles to be won 

Behold the Bird the draws the dawn 

From some far-phantom nest 

Ere dusk across the air is drawn 

And feathers fold in rest 

Where soon the fledgling, wild with youth 

Will join the gaping clan 

That wonders at the ageless truth 

Of fleeting days of man 

As Time’s momentous bird of prey 

Startles us with its wings 

And keens us to the changeless way 

Of ever-changing things 

We, tethered to Time’s old surprise 

Surge with the awe-struck throng 

Aboard the barge of  'how time flies’ 

That draws life’s charge along 

And teaches us to treasure more 

The moments as they come 

Because Time flies toward a door 

Not one will return from 

© Janet Martin 

Psalm 39:5
You, indeed, have made my days as handbreadths, 

and my lifetime as nothing before You. 

Truly each man at his best exists as but a breath. 

Selah

Beauty-calls

Sometimes Jim just shakes his head when I say,

'Gotta go! Beauty calls!'😊

Ecclesiastes 3:11 

He has made everything beautiful in its time. 

He has also set eternity in the human heart; 

yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Beauty calls, thus task will wait 

Before the sun falls past the gate 

And tucks the twinkle of today 

Its mementos of fleeting fray 

Into The Land of Far Away 

Beauty calls and bids us pause 

To marvel at its gifts because 

So much of life is harsh and hard 

So much of love is sorrow-scarred 

So much of laughter is tear-starred 

Beauty calls; we should reply 

So small beneath the big old sky 

But tall enough and not too old 

To balk at Duty’s rigid hold 

Beauty’s sheer wonders to behold 

With eyes to see and ears to hear 

And mouths to speak a word of cheer 

It dawns upon us wondrously 

We have the wherewithal to be 

Part of the call and the beauty 

© Janet Martin