Showing posts with label suffering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suffering. Show all posts

Friday, May 6, 2022

Of Ephemeral and Eternal...

This passage is part of what inspired today's poem...
as well as praying for those who are enduring terrible suffering
whether close to home or across the ocean... 
It the same God to whom all the heavens and earth belong
 who 'sets His affections' on us...


Deut.10:12-21 BSB

And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you
 but to fear the LORD your God
 by walking in all His ways, to love Him,
 to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul,
  13and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD
 that I am giving you this day for your own good?

14Behold, to the LORD your God belong the heavens,
 even the highest heavens,
 and the earth and everything in it.
  15Yet the LORD has set His affection on your fathers and loved them. 
And He has chosen you, their descendants after them,
 above all the peoples, even to this day.

16Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and stiffen your necks no more.
  17For the LORD your God is God of gods 
and Lord of lords, 
the great, mighty, and awesome God, 
showing no partiality and accepting no bribe.
  18He executes justice for the fatherless and widow, 
and He loves the foreigner, giving him food and clothing.
  19So you also must love the foreigner, 
since you yourselves were foreigners in the land of Egypt.

20You are to fear the LORD your God and serve Him. 
Hold fast to Him and take your oaths in His name.
  21He is your praise and He is your God, 
who has done for you these great and awesome wonders 
that your eyes have seen.

Here's to a weekend of counting God's
'great and awesome wonders'!

Time’s carousel of seasons twirls until our final breath...

Finally, spring is untwirling daffodils!




Sometimes life’s clime of dust-to-dust loses its luster, oh,
Where we wage wars of love and lust on shores of want and woe
Where rivalry of faith and fear tests how we heed life’s call
‘To love, serve, honor and revere our Lord God above all’

Time’s carousel of seasons twirls until our final breath
When everlasting due unfurls a world immune to death
Where no one can undo the gates that no appeal can budge
Where endless joy or sorrow waits where God alone is Judge

The threshing floor where grain from chaff has not been winnowed yet
Drenched with redemption’s autograph and blossom pirouette
Is mortal’s pilgrimage of dust, though lusterless sometimes
Its suffering is but the must that every Soul-dier climbs

…to the unveiling of the recompense of The Reward
Where we will reap the consequence eternally outpoured
Where the Staircase of Now and Here resonates with the call
‘To love, serve, honor and revere our Lord God above all’

Earth thunders as the great and awesome wonders of God brim
No other power can create but what belongs to Him
Where our eyes have seen the hemline of His majesty
As lusterless landscapes turn green where winter used to be 

© Janet Martin



Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Seeing Through the Glass Darkly or Prayer Changes Things/Us



This is not just any old chair...


Many, a many a prayer has climbed faith's stair from this old chair!
Prayers for forgiveness, wisdom, healing, patience and trust
and above all, love.

Prayer changes things; it transcends logic’s altitude of facts 
And transfers answers onus to He who His will exacts 
Mercy makes no mistakes, though the middle of His reply 
May feel like harsh rebuttals to the creature of the cry 

Prayer changes things; even when reasoning is mystified 
And ‘answers’ do not always feel like God is on our side 
Prayer changes things, if faith can learn to trust enough to yield 
And leave it all to Love until His purpose is revealed 

Prayer changes things; it flees the cage of comprehension’s scope 
And leaves the outcome with the One who is man’s Living Hope 
Prayer teaches us to listen as He whispers ‘Peace, be still’ 
While He works out for Greater Good the purpose of His will 

Prayer changes things, like attitudes impaired with fear or pride 
The Potter shapes the clay where change begins; on the inside 
And just as Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane 
Prayed to his Father so He bids us all ‘come unto Me’ 

Prayer changes things; as we begin to relinquish control 
And surrender the answers to the Saviour of the soul 
Prayer is the hiding place beneath the feathers of His wings 
Where God gathers us close, so close to Him; prayer changes things 

© Janet Martin 

We pray yet often prayers feel unanswered. 
We pray for healing and people die. 
We pray for the salvation of lost souls, ‘but they will not’ 
We pray for change that does not happen 
For love that seems to fail. 
Jesus prayed in Gethsemane and taught us how to pray;
"My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. 
Yet not as I will, but as you will." 
He was brutally crucified. He died. 
It looked like His prayer was unanswered but
God the Father sees beyond the present circumstance/suffering! 
Isa. 53:10-11
Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
    and though the Lord makes[c] his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
    and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.

After he has suffered,

    he will see the light of life[d] and be satisfied[e];
by his knowledge[f] my righteous servant will justify many,
    and he will bear their iniquities.

Heb 2. 8-10 
Now in putting everything in subjection to him, 
he left nothing outside his control.
At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. 
But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, 
crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, 
so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. 
For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, 
in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation
perfect through suffering...




Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Take Heart; The Cross Is Not The End


 Life since COVID-19 makes us really miss
'the good old days' doesn't it?
But these days many are turning to or turning back to God
What do we choose, suffering to draw us nearer to God
or ease and prosperity with God forgotten?!
 This Easter season we are without excuse
to kneel at the cross!


Love comes in many forms
So does hate
Life’s spirit-testing storms
Will abate
Nothing stays where it is
Forever
The bond that fastens This
Will sever

The loom that weaves and weds
Life’s duty
Entwines contrasting threads
For beauty
Take heart, when dark of night
Compasses
God’s everlasting light
Surpasses

When life turned upside down
Unsettles
And longing is a crown
Of nettles
When courage is a groaned
Surrender
God still abides; enthroned
Defender

Love comes in many forms
Staff and rod
Beneath the testing storms
Hand of God
Take heart, this woebegone
Hurt and loss
Pales in comparison
To Christ's cross

The cross is not the end
Then take heart
The eyes of faith, my friend
See in part
When death full sight imparts
We will find
A mist of broken hearts
Left behind


© Janet Martin


 When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.
    In God, whose word I praise—
in God I trust and am not afraid.
    What can mere mortals do to me?

 In God, whose word I praise,
    in the Lord, whose word I praise— 
 in God I trust and am not afraid.
    What can man do to me?

Psalm 56:3-4-10-11

Monday, May 20, 2019

Looking Beyond What We See


 Yesterday's Sunday morning message challenged us to rethink our attitudes on suffering !
Often we pray to be freed/healed from them when in fact, scripture teaches otherwise!

 ...and then, while I was working on this post up came this post on Ann Voskamp's blog!

Look, but look beyond the beauty brimming from the beaming bloom
Look, but look beyond the duty of the modest mop and broom
Look beyond the pond that sparkles like a rhinestone in the sun
Look, but look a little deeper than the sweep of seasons spun

Look, but look beyond the panoramas stirring sacred sighs
Look, but look beyond the frond that lavishes the earth, then dies
Look beyond time’s bitty bubble that does not burst to thin air
Look, but look beyond the trouble to the One who put it there

Look beyond the work that is more than the sweat of toil to sod
Look beyond the hurt that sometimes drains us enough to trust God
Look beyond want’s fondest ‘druthers’ to the Place of faith’s reward
Look, but look beyond the surface to the grace of Christ our Lord

© Janet Martin



  And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 
1 Pet.5:10 
 
 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, 
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; 
2 Cor.4:17
 
 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, 
and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 
Phil.3:10 

Monday, May 14, 2018

Leader, Guide, Director

The beautiful truth of God's love is, it is perfect even when life hurts! 
I wrote this poem with tears in my eyes, a lump in my throat and hope in my heart 



Our Sunday morning message included these promises...

 The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still."
(with easy-to-remember-reference) Exodus 14:14

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, 
who[ have been called according to his purpose.
Rom.8:28

Mist morning-tide seeps through hushed deeps across flushed meadowlands
It kisses slumb’ring worlds from sleep and rouses time’s demands
Where oft the ways of right and wrong collide and intersect
And oft we need to pray to God to lead, guide and direct

To lead us from temptation else we would be drawn astray
To guide through tribulation when we cannot see the way
To direct our path when mercy feels misunderstood
And trust His word, pure, undeterred ‘He works for our good’

He orchestrates, beyond mankind’s perception, Perfect Plan
His thoughts and ways are higher than the thoughts and ways of man
So Lord, forgive us when we doubt; our errant want correct
And teach us how to trust You as You lead, guide and direct
 

© Janet Martin

He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake. Ps.23:3

Guide me in your truth and teach me, 
for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.
Ps.25:5

In all your ways acknowledge Him, 
And He shall direct your paths. Prov:3:6