Cross – This Jolly Beggar

A Better Paradise

Concerning Paradise
we can’t go back again
said Adam to Eve

There’s Cain, there’s Abel
We’ll start all over again
Make it good this time

Abel’s dead by Cain’s hand
Paradise lies unattained
Eve said, my garden’s now a grave

Something greater lies ahead
Pride and death no more a stain
On this broken earth

With their dying eyes they saw
A bridge to life regained
The Son lifted up, reconciling God and man

For Eugi’s Weekly Thursday Prompt “paradise”; and Cee’s FOTD Challenge; click on the links and join in!

Prostrated by the summer’s heat, we cannot always see the fruit that is being produced on a vine. Just so, cast down by our sufferings, it’s hard to see the fruit God is producing in us. Even so, Lord God, we pray, let it all be to your glory! Amen.

[Christ Jesus said:] “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”
John 15: 1-6

Hope in the Cross-Roads

Cee’s FOTD Challenge

9-9-2020

Maybe it’s just that the camera angle caught it just right, but these viburnum leaves seem to form a perfect cross and mid-center, flowering buds. Can our daily crosses be thus, as roads to the heart of hope realized and yet to be realized? I suppose it’s all in where we place our faith, or rather in whom, the One who bore a cross for us and walks the cross-roads with us.

I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
Psalm 16: 8

Steadfast and True

What we wouldn’t do to have a steadfast friend, true and faithful through the seasons of our life. Sometimes those who seem most frail in our eyes to share the storms of life prove to be the most true and steady, bending with the winds and holding strong where others break.

This tree has stood on the periphery of our walks through early spring, summer and now at autumn’s slow appearance. It never allows us to pass without acknowledging it, standing alone as it does, but somehow reassuring, like a cross on a hill. Whereas the Cross bears testimony to an eternal significance and a love eternal, this little tree somehow reminds me to take the temporal at the pace of eternity, one day at a time, knowing He whose eyes are on the sparrow watches over me and holds tomorrow in His loving hands.

So let us be, steadfast and true to Him, trusting, one day at a time.