Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Today is like an invitation to
so much joy still left to taste
because joy is unlike most delights we seize
and devour and then,
they disappear!
One of my most dearly loved chapters was part of today’s bible-in-a-year reading!
Though you have not seen him, you love him;
and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him
and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,…
1 Pet. 1:21
Through him you believe in God,
who raised him from the dead and glorified him,
and so your faith and hope are in God.
In this life of love and learning
Rife with delight and dismay
May the Maker of each morning
Kindle gladness for today
May the Harbinger of Heaven
Fill our days with holy worth
For to know we are forgiven
Is the greatest joy on earth
Today unfolds like a flower
Hour-petals fade and fall
Unlike delights we devour
Joy transcends the tangible
Unlike moments softly drifting
Like snowflakes that melt away
God instills dawn’s daily gifting
With joy hinged to Endless Day
We know there is no returning
To estrangement’s yester-place
Today is for love, and learning
Fresh arrangements of God’s grace
Dawn is like an invitation
To what we ought never waste
Love and learning’s celebration
Of so much joy still to taste
© Janet Martin
1 Pet. 1:3-7
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.
This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded
by God’s power until the coming of the salvation
that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
6 In all this you greatly rejoice,
though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.
7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—
of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—
may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
I love old books by or about pastors that share wisdom and humor
forged from fellowship and challenges of family and flock!
such as the book I am reading right now…
saying no to a ‘money-career’ offer, after devastating loss of a hurricane
to a disillusioned doctor who was trying to wash/swim
his troubles away in the ocean every morning…
to a young girl going down a bad way…
