Happiness of Rain

 Last week's little rainfall was lapped up by the sun in no time flat

so once again we are singing praises for a much needed rain!

Earth laughs; from laden heavens spills the happiness of rain

It splashes into flower cups and dances on the lane

It kisses thirsty gardens, and douses the dusty street

And draws a puddle world of bliss for children in bare feet

As thirsty hills and fields are drenched and quenched; the robin sings

With the contagious happiness of rain-drop dazzled things

© Janet Martin

Love Lyric

Looking forward to another wedding this week (my niece)!

Maybe that's what is drawing me to contemplate the

many-splendored thing;

Love

💝

From the bud of love’s increase

Emerges a glorious flower...

Love scatters the seeds that grow into flowers in the garden of life...

Warren Wiersbe — 'Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.'

1 John 4:7

Beloved, let us love one another, because love comes from God. 

Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

1 John 4:16

God is love; whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

In most of the lines in this poem the word 'love' 

could be replaced with the word 'God'

💗🙏

Love rises to the occasion

Fits us for life’s best and worst

Love's resounding adoration

Honors He who loved us first

Love elicits awestruck wonder

Love compels us to proceed

No matter what we encounter

Love will supply our need

Love equips us for each hour

From the bud of love’s increase

Emerges a glorious flower

Faith and hope and joy and peace

Love defies mind's comprehension

Love is oft misunderstood

Because Divine Intervention

Is love working greater good

Love conquers hate’s bitter rancor

In the eye of conflict’s gale

Love is like a steadfast anchor

That will never shift nor fail

Love is gentle, kind and humble

Love is thankful, patient, true

Love does not covet or grumble

Love is God in me and you

Love is a foretaste of Heaven

True love is always enough

By Love's grace we are forgiven

Love is God and God is love

Lord, if all else fails, love never

Let this be faith's comfort sweet

Nothing in this world can sever

Us from love and joy complete

© Janet Martin

It is impossible to truly love

yet disregard God.

To live a loving life is to live an obedient life.

To live in obedience to His commands is true love.

Sometimes love is falsely accused of hate 

because it does not approve or praise 

the disregard to God's Commandments.

Jesus reminds us in the passage below how to love...

John 15:9-17

Love and Joy Perfected

 “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. 

 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, 

just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.

 “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, 

and that your joy may be full.  

This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 

 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. 

 You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. 

 No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing;

 but I have called you friends, 

for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.  

You did not choose Me, but I chose you 

and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, 

and that your fruit should remain, 

that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. 

 These things I command you, that you love one another.

Next door the big tent is coming down.

The Big Event (wedding) is over 

...and though there may be an emotional letdown

after so much excitement and planning 

Love transcends the temporary!

So joy abides because

Love bears all things, 

believes all things, 

hopes all things, 

endures all things.

Love never fails

1 Cor.13:7-8

Summer Sunday

 

Bored breeze tousles walnut tresses

Fancy takes a flying leap

Through blue welkin wildernesses

Dotted with fluffy cloud-sheep

Wonder wanders like a poet

Looking for Lyric to snare

Wafting winsomely as though it

Winks at ink-besotted stare

Workweek weariness forgiven

Summer-Sunday, sweet reward

Grants a glimm’ring glimpse of heaven

As lust for life is restored

Woodland cast composes music

Masterpiece of lisps and sighs

Blue backdrop for green mosaics

…Mosquitoes mar paradise

Queen Ann’s lace trims dusty collars

On earth’s summer-Sunday best

Over wheat field skims the swallow (never could quite capture the swallow)

Fledglings wrestle in the nest

Zephyr strums loose-strife and daisy

Book and reader become one

Bumbling bee hums, hazy, lazy

Melodies in monotone

Summer Sunday, sweet siesta

From six days of toil’s staid toll

Summer Sunday, fine fiesta

Rests the body, feeds the soul

Bored breeze tousles treetop tresses

Plays a soft and sleepy tune

Loveliest of happiness-es

Summer Sunday afternoon

© Janet Martin

Poem without photo-interruptions...

Bored breeze tousles walnut tresses

Fancy takes a flying leap

Through blue welkin wildernesses

Dotted with fluffy cloud-sheep

Wonder wanders like a poet

Looking for Lyric to snare

Wafting winsomely as though it

Winks at ink-besotted stare

Workweek weariness forgiven

Summer-Sunday, sweet reward

Grants a glimm’ring glimpse of heaven

As lust for life is restored

Woodland cast composes music

Masterpiece of lisps and sighs

Blue backdrop for green mosaics

…Mosquitoes mar paradise

Queen Ann’s lace trims dusty collars

On earth’s summer-Sunday best

Over wheat field skims the swallow

Fledglings wrestle in their nest

Zephyr strums loose-strife and daisy

Book and reader become one

Bumbling bee hums, hazy, lazy

Melodies in monotone

Summer Sunday, sweet siesta

From six days of toil’s staid toll

Summer Sunday, fine fiesta

Rests the body, feeds the soul

Bored breeze tousles treetop tresses

Plays a soft and sleepy tune

Loveliest of happiness-es

Summer Sunday afternoon

© Janet Martin

Believer's Mandate

Sunday sermons aren't just for Sundays, are they?!!

Love is so much easier said than done, isn't it?!

Just a few thoughts after attending a beautiful wedding yesterday

and listening to a few inspired messages this morning!

This poem, by inserting the words 'ought to' between the words

 'we' and 'live'

may make it more relevant😅🙏

Love is a lifetime commitment on so many levels

in so many ways, to so many people

and above all to/through He who IS love

More Love to Thee-Fernando Ortega 

We live, not just to earn our daily bread and meat to eat

We live to learn better how to wash one another’s feet

We live to give because of what we have freely received

God’s gift of grace from the first moment we truly believed

We live to love God first then fellowman; all else is sin

We live to prove the righteousness and love of God within

We live to mirror Christ’s example of humility

Where pray, nothing is dearer than the truth that sets us free

We live to serve, not to be served, stirred by meek reverence

For He who loved us first and died for death’s deliverance

Then pray when temptation torments and cunning ploys compete

That love’s willing obedience will make our joy complete

For God so loved the world He gave His Son to pay sin’s debt

Once, and for all He overthrew the grave and conquered death

God is not mocked; if we confessed our sin and have believed

We ought to live to give because we have freely received

© Janet Martin

Due to laryngitis and a cough I decided it would be better

to worship from home this Sunday morning,

Links to a few sermons which

  partly inspired this poem!

Do Not Give The Devil a Foothold- Alistair Begg 

July 3rd Message at WBC

It Is July

 Happy, happy July!

Our first day of July was a perfect blend of busyness and beauty...

(I have been asked more than once if, for all the pictures I take

'don't I want to invest in a nicer, bigger camera?'

Part of me would like to but I need something that fits into a pocket

so work and captured moments like yesterday's, won't conflict😅💗)

oops! spills will happen!

It is July

The month of sapphire sky and flaxen wheat

A pleasant place to slow the pace of labor and bare feet

The garden grins as it begins to burst with bounty where

Not long ago a world of snow and dreams teased our stare

It is July

The month when lazy breezes loll and sigh

And lure us 'neath the lofty wreath of leafy lullaby

Sweet summer days, thy love song plays in every flower bell

As thankfulness and happiness in perfect kinship dwell/swell

It is July

Time’s ode to butterfly and hummingbird

The heady woo as scent of dust and dew thrill senses stirred

Where sprinklers lilt with sparkles spilt and lobbed against the sky

Where children run and everyone is younger in July

It is July

Work and play vie for front and center stage

So much to touch and taste before time’s tried haste turns the page

No joy is common in July; each heat-sweet summons, pure

Each day a gift soon set adrift where morning casts its lure

It is July

Shadow quilts lie in wait for picnics, books

Impetuous hiatuses from duty’s rigid looks

Ah, we are summer glad. So glad. Sun sizzles in the sky

Zinnia buds pop. Fat rain drops plop. We laugh. It is July

© Janet Martin

...and a picture perfect wedding day!

(happening this afternoon!)

The 'little girl next door' is no more!

Today she is a beautiful bride!

Ode to June

Life's busyness just doesn't allow for all the June poems that beg to be written...

but one final ode to June as its farewell tugs on heartstrings,

in spite of July joy waiting at dawn

June is a flower-friendly lease...

...a strawberry lover's paradise

...a freedom-elated school-boy

June is the tempo of bare feet

June is the laughter of a child...

June is the perfect centerpiece

In the living-room of a year...

June joins the ranks where ages rest

A quick collage of memories

Like pansies, between pages pressed

Like madrigals of peonies

While gardens reach toward the sky

While mornings roll toward July

While all the while we my-oh-my

At how time flies with ease

Like a plot decked with petals strewn

Like a teapot, tipped, poured and drained

June spills and fills each afternoon

With gold and green and blue unchained

While days and dreams mingle and merge

While shadow-breakers ebb and surge

Across shorelines of sun-glossed verge

Of what yet waits to be

June stuns the soul with poetry

Strawberry-lovers’ paradise

June is a leaf-lush canopy

A backdrop splashed with butterflies

June is part ballad and part waltz

Blip of cartwheels and somersaults

June is a woman without faults

Save one; Her swift demise

June is the tempo of bare feet

June is the laughter of a child

June is a love song, bittersweet

As clocks and hollyhocks run wild

A bubble on a breeze, ahoy

A freedom-elated school-boy

Lithe, and leaping from joy to joy

All reason reconciled

June is a flower-friendly lease

Of pure contentment now and here

June is the perfect centerpiece

In the living-room of a year

June is dusk’s long-lingering flight

June is daybreak while it is night

June is the bull’s eye of delight

And farewell’s fondest tear

© Janet Martin

Fare Thee Well, Love

Thankfulness and Praise

1 Pet.1:17-19

And if you call on the Father,

who without partiality judges according to each one’s work, 

conduct yourselves throughout the time of your [e]stay here in fear;

 knowing that you were not redeemed with [f]corruptible things, like silver or gold, 

from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers,

 but with the precious blood of Christ,...

Imagine if every Sunday morning the minister would,

with trembling hands open a letter of encouragement

such as Peter wrote to remind the early church,

the first Christians facing opposition and persecution,

of the believer's living hope, so they/we would

'rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you

 at the revelation of Jesus Christ; 'v.13

Oh joy, we have that letter not only for Sunday morning but every single day!

v.20-21

He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, 

but was [g]manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God, 

who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, 

so that your faith and hope are in God.

Then as we think on these things 

may our lives overflow with humble thankfulness and praise!

When Joseph was thrown into prison after Potiphar's lie

he did not seek to vindicate himself but trusted God and served Him, even in prison!

'because the Lord was with him; and whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper.'

Gen.39:23

Lord, help us strive to live our days in such a humble, trusting way...

As this morning's much needed rain is a plant's 'living hope'

so is God's Word/truth to the one who puts their trust in Him!

Lord, help us strive to live our days

With hearts of thankfulness and praise

Remind us of faith’s recompense

A heavenly inheritance

Lord, make the motive of life’s call

To glorify You above all

Lord, in the dark thick of the fight

Help us to be a shining light

Lord, let the kindness of Your grace

Equip, encourage and embrace

Let holy conduct testify

Of the hope on which we rely

Lord, lest some deadly vice creep in

Convict us of each subtle sin

Lord, then as we discern Your ways

Fill us thankfulness and praise

Amaze us with the end that tolls

With the salvation of our souls

Bought, not with world-wealth sacrificed

But with the precious blood of Christ

Lord, keep us from spite's ready snare

Stir in us Gethsemane's prayer

Then, help us strive to live our days

With hearts of thankfulness and praise

Forever and Always,

Amen

© Janet Martin

Matt.5:16

In the same way, let your light shine before others,

 that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Father, what we know not

Teach us

What we have not

Give us

What we are not

Make us,

For Your Son's sake,

amen

(excerpt from message below)

Another excerpt: sometimes a bad thing happens for a good reason!

(Listen around and after the 30 min. mark for very vital, somber, relevant caution!)

The Need for Prayer

Do you love your pastor/s?

Do you pray for them so their

preaching may be the gathered result of our prayers?!!

Does a Sunday morning sermon bring fruit of 'their labour' or 'our labour'

as fellow-labourers for our Lord!?

Beauty Pageant

 Wishing you a wow-run-wild kind of day!

This time of years is a salad-lover's paradise!!

snaring buds as I snip off faded peonies...

Beauty burgeons, brims and billows

Glints and glimmers, sweeps and sighs

Beauty spills hills; plumped green pillows

Perched against cerulean skies

Beauty is sweet bliss unshaken

Beauty startles, stirs and awes

Beauty is the kiss that wakens

Worship’s wild, off-guard applause

Beauty bursts bud-vaults with flowers

Wonder loosens longing’s noose

Beauty decks and drips from arbors

Periwinkle and chartreuse

Beauty sprawls in shadow-steeples

Mapping out the march of time

Beauty falls in faded petals

From the frond that held its prime

Beauty ignores human nature

Often blind to God at large

Beauty does not force the creature

To enjoy the show, no charge

Beauty flutters, flits and flickers

Filling hearts with my-oh-my

Beauty warbles, wafts and whispers

Bitty bird and butterfly

Beauty bids bards brave the battle

That the font does not disclose

Beauty helps hope cope with trouble

The thorn tempered by the rose

Beauty murmurs and meanders

Like a brook snared by a pen

As the poet tames to paper

Beauty to relive again

© Janet Martin

I was reminded of this verse below because counting all that God does and creates 

cannot be contained in all the books and poems ever written!

John 21:25

Jesus did many other things as well. 

If every one of them were written down,

 I suppose that even the whole world would not have room 

for the books that would be written.