Tag: Hope

Letter to No Lycidas

Genre: Poetry 
Word count: 100 
written for Rochelle's Friday Fictioneers 
click on the friendly frog for more tales of a hundred words or less 
& join the fun!
photo prompt © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Letter to No Lycidas

No Lycidas are you, my son,
no watery bier nor desert grave
holds you. But in the crisp
of autumn air, your countenance
lights a distant town, another’s home
a place where you from me remain.
Yet I wonder, pray one day I’ll see
you striding back to see me here;
that one day that old mailbox
will find you on a daily chore
or whether the woods beyond will gape
to hear your lusty songs of praise
to the God of miracles and a Son
who freeing the soul from evil design
heals faultless the sutures of the mind.

Through It All: Fruit

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.

Summer Berries

[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
Continue reading “Through It All: Fruit”

September Hope by Candlelight

Broken shadows across the cracked ground
your grave day lost in flurried words
like September leaves across
yesterday’s hallowed ground
grief yet uninterred:
you six years gone
from my sight
till Day
breaks.

Written for dVerse’s “Poetic: 9 across for a countdown,” this nonet begins with a line from W.S. Merwin’s “To the Light of September:”

Continue reading “September Hope by Candlelight”

Orchid Changes

Cee’s FOTD Challenge

9-14-2020: Please send prayers and good wishes to Cee, Chris, the girls, and their sweet cat, with hopes that their home will be spared the current wildfires.

These pink-tipped orchid blooms were a bright yellow when they first opened but slowly changed color to what they are now. They’ll lighten some more before they fade altogether.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Isaiah 40:8
Photo attribution: BeholdingHimMinistries.org

Bless the LORD, O My Soul!

Psalm 103 Bless the Lord, O my soul,
    and all that is within me,
    bless his holy name!
2 Bless the Lord, O my soul,
    and forget not all his benefits,
3 who forgives all your iniquity,
    who heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit,
    who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
5 who satisfies you with good
    so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

Continue reading “Bless the LORD, O My Soul!”

Before You Go

I could feel her soft, wrinkled hand tightening on mine. I don’t know how long we stood before she finally spoke.

“I was looking out that window over the sign. I saw your grandfather’s mother kill mine. Just because she wasn’t the same color. It’s been seventy years now. It feels like just yesterday.”

I got my tongue working. “Grandma, how could you marry him?”

She turned, soft brown eyes wet with tears. “It wasn’t easy but love won. Hate lost. You’ll be going off to college soon. You won’t forget that, will you?”

“Like the sign says, Grandma, ‘NOPE’!”

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

word count: 100 
written for Rochelle's Friday Fictioneers
click on Rochelle Wisoff-Fields's hand-drawing of the frog 
for more tales of a hundred words or less.
And join the fun!hand-drawing-animal-frog-wearing-face-medical-mask-covid-protection-methods-coronavirus-quarantine-warning-vector-178410566

Hope in the Cross-Roads

Cee’s FOTD Challenge

9-9-2020

Viburnum

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

Golden Red Marigold

Cee’s FOTD Challenge

9-8-2020

As if she needed a late afternoon shower to freshen her up, this tiny marigold emerges with golden pistils blazing, her scarlet gown lined with gold.

So too does hope emerge out of the dark clouds of the day.

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation

Psalm 42:5

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.

For Cee’s FOTD Challenge.