A Rose is A Rose
Lay You Down by Flickr User jinterwas, CC License = Attribution, Noncommercial
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It’s the end of a long but blessed day with interaction between a bunch of writers who love The Creator. That said, since I’m a bit tired tonight, I’m going to cheat a little and just throw in some previously written poetry. If you like poetry, this should make you happy. 🙂 If you don’t like poetry much, I hope you decide to at least explore my prose to see what you may see.
This first poem breaks away from anything I had ever tried before or since. It is called a Pantoum, and I learned it from a prompt at http://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com. (If you like to write poetry, I recommend following this page on Twitter to stay up with their many prompts.) To write this type of poem, read the detailed instructions by clicking the word, though I found a few different ideas for how they should be written by doing a Google search for the subject. In basic, you’ll notice some repeating lines from one stanza to the next (as required), and you’ll notice the last line of the poem is the same as the first. Here’s my effort…
ALOFT THE PETALS
A Pantoum by Crystal A Murray
July 9th, 2013The rose lay aloft the petals
Strewn across a bed of fur.
She dug in deep to find the mettle
To dive right in and comfort her.Strewn across the bed of fur,
A welcome invitation beckons
To dive right in and comfort her;
Should she or not her brain reckons.A welcome invitation beckons,
Come hither to rest yourself just now.
Should she or not her brain reckons,
Would rest come swift or even allow?Come hither to rest yourself just now,
Relax and close your weary eyes.
Would rest come swift or even allow,
To sleep and dream and touch the skies?At last she lay upon the bed,
She dug in deep to find the mettle.
She rested there in colors of red,
The rose lay aloft the petals.
And, since we’re talking about roses, here is a video of one of my favorite songs by Linda Ronstadt, Love is a Rose…
This next poem is one of my first attempts at non-rhyming poetry. It’s called A Very Good Rose…
A VERY GOOD ROSE By Crystal A. Murray—(c) 1998 Each petal perfectly formed In the shape of a heart, With a feel of silk and velvet. What a creation is God’s beautiful flower… The rose. Its scent so pure and sweet, So smoothly it unfolds, Revealing at its heart The seed that makes it grow. No matter the color, No matter the size; Whether a bud or full bloom; No matter the differences in perfume, No matter the thorns that pierce the flesh, Still, everyone loves the rose. God must look upon this precious creation- This wonder of beauties. He must breathe in with its scent And sigh contentedly. “Such a great accomplishment.” “It is good!” He says, “And yet”, He says with another sigh, “This is not my best work. I know I can do better.” So, did He create a new rose? With no thorns? A stronger scent? Did He create a never-dying flower? No! In His greatest moment of creation God simply grabbed… A handful of dust And began to mold it. Suddenly, He caught a glimpse of Himself… A mirror image. He molded His new creation To resemble His own image. He breathed into it His own breath. And behold… God’s greatest creation of all time was born! “It is very good!” He said, and He rested.
And to bring this to an end, let me share one more video from YouTube. This one is the song What A Friend We Have in Jesus, but it is sung to the tune of The Rose as made popular by Bette Midler. Try singing it to this tune yourself. It works wonderfully, and it feels great to sing…
May God richly bless you with His abundant grace and mercy, and may you walk in His presence all your days until you walk into His presence for eternity.
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He Promised A (Rose) Garden
Mottisfont Abbey Rose Garden by Flickr User ukgardenphotos, CC License = Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative Works
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I love to sing karaoke, and yes, I’m a country girl, so my favorite tracks are usually a country flavor. I’ve always liked the Lynn Anderson song, Rose Garden because I feel like it tells a truth about life in general and not just relationships. It’s true we can’t have just sunshine and no rain, or we’d be dry as deserts and nothing could grow. And there are a lot of people to whom we would love to gift the world on a silver platter, but if it took that, or promises of the moon, to get them to love us, we wouldn’t really want them in our lives. Fortunately, God wants our commitment to Him, but He doesn’t require perfection to receive His wonderful gifts.
In today’s reading from Leviticus 26:3 through Leviticus 26:5 (that’s right, only 3 verses), we begin a new week and a new portion, Parashah 33. The Hebrew name is B’chukkotai and it means “By My Regulations.” In the reading, God shows Israel a simple demonstration of cause and effect. He shows how doing things His way will yield the results they really want to see. Since it’s so short, here’s the complete reading for the day from The Complete Jewish Bible…
See, He does promise a garden, and He promises the rain to water it. And, while much of what He promises is simple common sense, such as reaping what we sow, doing things God’s way is also sensible because He’s the original Creator. He knows how things are supposed to work based on the way He created them to work. A modern world example would be that we must click the “start” button to shut down Microsoft Windows(R). It doesn’t seem like a normal or sensible response, but it is the way that works because it is the way the creators built it.
So, as the song says, “Smile for a while, and let’s be jolly: Love shouldn’t be so melancholy. Come along and share the good times while we can.” We can praise God for the sunshine and for the rain; for the seed-time and for harvest; and for all our going forth and coming in because He walks with us through every moment of it. God may not have actually promised us a rose garden, but He does promise a garden of provision to sustain us in this life and a garden of eternity to give us hope. As He promises in His holy word, He will never leave nor forsake us, and He will be with us always–until the end of time.
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May 3, 2014 Posted by Crystal A Murray (aka CrystalWriter) | Bible Study, Nonfiction, Torah Commentary | Adonai, Almighty, Bible, Bible Gateway, Bible reading, Bible study, Complete Jewish Bible, Creator, crystalwriter, garden, God, Holy Bible, Israel, Jesus, Leviticus, Lord, Old Covenant, Old Testament, Parashah, Portions, promise, provision, rose, Scripture, season, The Complete Jewish Bible, Torah, Torah commentary, Torah Portions, Torah Reading, Word, Word of God, Word of the Lord, www.biblegateway.com, Yahveh, Yahweh | Leave a comment