A Blessing for Hope

I bless you with a slate wiped completely clean
and a brand new box of coloured chalk, ready.

I bless you with the silver lining
of every cloud after the storm slows into rain.

I bless you with a breeze on stifling days
to swirl around your thoughts, lifted.

I bless your boat to be carried
by the broadest rivers of purpose.

I bless the dead bones long lying,
to resurrect with revolutionary dreams.

I bless the music latent in your body
to be expressed through your instrument of choice.

I bless your feet to feel grounded
and your wings to flex amply wide out.

I bless you to grieve all of your losses
on the swell and crest of each wave.

I bless your voice to have a place of belonging,
for you to turn the key and open the door.

I bless what is waiting around the corner
to give you a glimpse of fresh knowing.

I bless the wells of inspiration
to be drawn from in bountiful measure,

and the windows to be thrown open
for the light and air to get in,

for the folds and wrinkles to be soothed
and the past to never dictate the future,

for a lullaby and melody to rest upon
your curtain, and cross the threshold into sleep.

I bless your creative insights
and your stories to be told.

I bless you to believe in yourself,
even when others have lost faith.

I bless your failures to become your friends
and a perspective of truth, your great worth.

I bless you with a multiplication of promises
to be dear to you as treasure once lost, now found.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Leon Biss Unsplash

Space for Loving

You have always believed the best about me.
I have been cradled in faith from my birth.
Your emphasis is on what love can see.

Not on my own limitations
Or even on what I dream or envision.
When I learn to let go of what I want so badly,
My efforts drain out into your ability.

Comforter of broken passions,
Deliverer of sunken intention,
You have brought me into the space for loving.

You are weeding from me what hinders,
You sow in me what grows from faith alone.

It is better to believe and feel the blood flow through.
It is better to relinquish crusty longings.
It is better to throw off stale perspectives
To make room for what only love can do.

Jenneth Graser

The Time for Faith to Arise

I am a warrior on the winds of time.
I do not stay down when my back is covered
by the sound of a lion's roar.

A call has reached me from over the battlements of my heart,
Be still! I will fight for you!

When the pursuit intensifies with one thing after another,
I will stand up internally into strength not my own.
I will relearn what it is to do more than I am capable of.
I will overcome each fiery thought with ageless rivers of living water.

The angels are ministering very powerfully at this time
and desperate souls seek desperate measures.

A sword can only penetrate effectively when sharpened
on the words that belong to another world.

We are living in a temporary frame
and the future knows what can help us.

We will speak to ourselves with certainty.
We will not accept the lies of circumstance.
It is always time for faith to arise
and the time for faith to arise is now.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Unsplash Priscilla Du Preez

Love is Never Wasted

We have opened our hands
to let go of the final precious offerings.

There is nothing left in our control.
Now the pallette is empty
for a deposit of your colour.
Now the parchment has been erased
for the readiness of your pen.

Our relationships have been
relinquished on your threshold.

Where we have been unable
to make things right,
our forgiveness may be the gift
that reconciles, or your unseen hands
may sculpt a new possibility.

Letting go may be a kite of dreams
that sets free the seeds of grace,
for in another realm we may wait to truly know
each other once again.

How many seeds are planted in love
only to bear fruit in eternity?

As many seeds we may sow
and never see the harvest this side,
may be planted in eternal realms
to become fruit for the lips of God.

Love is never wasted
and will always cause growth
hidden in our everlasting souls,
in our physical realm made manifest,
or in the Spirit, as yet unfelt, we may never know.

But we can rest in the knowledge
of love that always bears the fruits of peace
and takes what is stretched out,
our palms open as wings,
finally able to feel space enough
to take to the sky,

unencumbered by the weight of
trying to bear matters
that belong in the care of God alone.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Kyle Szegedi

A Very New Time

My Dear

You are on the verge of a very new time
even though the mist is still thick on the fields.

As you notice the dew on leaves
and the fragrance of trodden earth,
I am there in the places you feel the most lack,
working.

My purposes are to build you up in the weakness
you face, especially in the places that feel impossible.
I am there, present.

In your heart's cry and needs, with your family and friends,
every relationship that bears down on your shoulders -
I am there, working.

You are on the verge of a very new time
and I have been restoring the history of your life.

In every small act of forgiveness, I am there.
You are not as far off as you feel,
in fact, the radiance of my face beholds you.

My love is as real as it was when you first knew me.

I am there,
I AM.

Jenneth Graser

Photography - Benjamin Balazs  

Listen to Julie True- I Need You Lord, Meet Me Here

Your Breath on the Wind

You have beckoned us with no haste
to take off our shoes for what is holy.

We have felt the soil of compassion
between our toes squelching with readiness
for what must be planted.

Change has come to us on an olive branch
in the mouth of a dove,
when we finally opened the window.

The outer case of our old ways of doing
has peeled slowly into revelation.

All butterflies at first look bedraggled,
and messy lumps of wings take time.

Leaving the things we found comfortable
and predictable,
we wait for the colours of a broader spectrum.

But we also stopped searching for silver linings
when we learned to appreciate thunderstorm grey.

There were butterflies under the rain
coming up into the sky
and being taken
wherever the wind was going.

We forget to take control
when we see your breath on the wind.

Jenneth Graser

Photography - David Mark

Listen to Gravity - Jenn Johnson

Reach into the Side

Ashes strewn to the ocean
have returned to us as birds.

Notes are tied to these messengers
for the ones who have waited too long.

You felt forgotten amongst the heavy agenda
of Heaven's timetables.

Intercessions floating up to the throne
didn't seem to bear your particular fragrance.

But God has written down something for you
in his own hand.

Communion is once again opening
with lines that are clear.

You've been blessed with the
blessings of fumbling Thomas.

We too, have felt the doubt and the pain.

We too, can reach into the side of Christ
and come away with resurrections of faith

on wounds and scars, transformed.

Jenneth Graser

The Sound of Amen - this newly released collection of 100 poems for download at Noisetrade is birthed out of a one year pilgrimage with God through difficulty, loss, the end of seasons and the beginning of new things. Discover an adventure into the deep places of your listening heart. 

The Hidden Beauty of Boundless Faith

I have come to rest awhile
where there are no answers.
Where my questions have
dematerialized.

My eyelids are closed
under a merriment of light,
as my mind stretches into
the lake of your imagination.

Every fact man has over time
in vast libraries of knowledge attained,
cannot compare with the singular bliss
of delving fully heart, mind and soul
into mystery.

Being one with secrets
that are kept for later,
keeps me grinning on the sleeves
of my Great Father.

He invites all of his children
into the art of waiting,
where intricate learning folds
into the flesh only on
the silence of oracles.

There is territory that has
been meticulously mapped out,
and there are vast regions
as yet unexplored that head out into
mile upon mile of space.

Take my hand Abba Father.
Where I know nothing...
You may impart to me, more.

Where I think I know,
I have created for myself limitation.
Lead me into the hidden beauty
of boundless faith.

Jenneth Graser

#write31days
Day 10 Prompt - unknown

Photography - Brian Peterson

Listen to "Hidden" - Will Reagan

The Depths of Silence

Climb this well worn path,
a crunch of gravel flicks the verge.

Breathe into the pain of long having remained.

Now it is time to feel the steep
trail call you to
where the air grows thin.

Rocks obscure the way, but you
no longer give in to them.

You grope for a handhold
and pull yourself through
the risk of falling.

Up, over the boulders onto
the strangeness of unfamiliar ground.

The voices critical have
hummed under the door for too long.

You are called to a kind of quiet,
where waterfalls thrash mountains
into holding pools so deep.

Stand on the edge of the view -
take in the senses of
being, above all things.

Feel your mind become one
with every promise you believe.

You are ready to finally plunge
with a breath and a step;
into the depths of silence.

Then you will know what to do.

Jenneth Graser

#write31days
Day 5 Prompt - silence

Photo - amazinglytimedphotos.com