I hear of folly and fowl play.
I look to You,
And remember Your Cross.
The psalmist sang of the Dark Valley.
Yet knew Your Presence and Your shield.
Here in my world,
Reign and sup with me.
Hope surrounds me.
As I am Yours,
Beloved child in sweet surrender.
Even Pharaoh served Your purpose.
His obstinacy but a tool in Your Hand.
The Red Sea became a bridge.
Joining heaven to a People.
Times change.
Passover continues.
Your Will,
My Land of Milk and Honey.
©2016 Joann Nelander
Pillar of Fire,
Pillar of Cloud
Pillar of protection.
You advance,
Always onward,
No retreat.
Faith leads.
Obedient, we follow,
Abandoned to Your Will.
Holy Light,
Though dark the night,
Secure respite.
Heavenward,
Hallowed rest,
Safely home.
© 2016 Joann Nelander
Your love is sweeter than the honey dripping upon the lover’s tongue,
Sweeter than wine that wakens the palate to new delight.
Your love is aroma and taste penetrating the heart.
It is the roof growing higher,
And foundation of my world,
Glimpsing heaven and begging it near.
Your love is sweeter than my life.
It is invitation and enticement,
Known and unknowing,
Higher than happiness,
Straining to the Holy.
Your Love is the beginning and end of Life.
Falling on the world,
Drop by drop,
Yet, like a river in flood,
Endless and eternal,
The crossing of Now and Forever
Meeting in my bossom,
Drawing me free from myself,
Into You.
In Your thirst
You are all poverty,
Hungry,
And yet all supplying,
Giving and spent,
Still full in Your Emptiness.
Your Love is sweeter than this life,
Holy with promise,
You ring my heart with longing
And satisfy my depths and queries.
With Truth, You show me the heaven of Your Heart,
And bid me “Come.”
© 2016 Joann Nelander
Write my love upon my heart
That I might sign it with my life’s blood,
Coursing through its chambers,
Rushing to serve and sing to You.
With every beat,
With every pulsation,
Carry my persuasions to the ends of my being,
Returning as tides to touch anew Your Heart,
United in Spirit,
Kissing each movement and moment,
As I spread myself upon Your hidden shores,
To embrace and race,
In hurried pulse to do You Will
As my own,
Reaching for eternity.
With a kiss upon the brow
Crown all my moments
With the fiat I proffer
In Your ever Present Now.
Heart of Love,
Be in me.
Sighed and signed,
Joann
Dear Reader,
Make my prayer your prayer,
By placing it beside mine,
And together,
We shall love Him best.
Copyright 2016 Joann Nelander
Lift the veil in this morass of Sin,
That faith may blossom and hope enter in.
Let the Sun of Justice shine
Upon a people in decline,
That looking up from the tyranny of power and things
Your face may captivate and solace bring.
Pour down torrents of Thy Grace
To cleanse this dry and brutal place ,
Uproot to plant anew
A Day of peace like settled dew,
That minds be bright and intellects sublime
And our only glory may be Thine.
© 2016 Joann Nelander
On an ordinary day in Paradise,
Into a world created to glorify God and Man,
Adam introduced just a smidgen of sin.
Merely, a pebble, Adam thought,
Hardly enough to weigh on a cosmic scale.
In the grand scheme of Time, and Space,
The cosmic sea quaked.
In ever increasing concentric circles,
Shock waves carried an echo,
Reverberating, through all that is matter,
Shouting, “Me”.
On an ordinary day, dreaming of Paradise,
In a world created to glorify God and Man,
Man hides in the evening stillness.
Mercy walks about offering forgiveness.
I smile in my “niceness”.
Still in denial,
I make a show of all the good things I have done,
While all Creation simply waits on tiptoe
Praying for the revelation of the sons of God.
Be Holy! 