Love and Learning's Celebration

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!Today is like an invitation to so much joy still left to tastebecause 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! :8Though 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. 1:21Through 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 learningRife with delight and dismayMay the Maker of each morningKindle gladness for today May the Harbinger of HeavenFill our days with holy worthFor to know we are forgivenIs the greatest joy on earth Today unfolds like a flowerHour-petals fade and fallUnlike delights we devourJoy transcends the tangible Unlike moments softly driftingLike snowflakes that melt awayGod instills dawn’s daily giftingWith joy hinged to Endless Day We know there is no returningTo estrangement’s yester-placeToday is for love, and learningFresh arrangements of God’s grace Dawn is like an invitationTo what we ought never wasteLove and learning’s celebrationOf so much joy still to taste © Janet Martin 1 Pet. 1:3-7Praise 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 humorforged 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...