Kissing The Morning With Frost Poem by Chris Taylor

Last night was kind of hard for me. My heart was hurt and it was difficult to see the lesson in it. This morning I awoke and looked out my window while holding my cup of coffee. I gazed out of the glass for a time and my eyes began to rest on my wife’s tomato plant. It was totally encased in a beautiful sheen of frost. Each vine and fruit was completely surrounded in a chilling prison of ice; signalling the death of growth and the start of a new season. I began to lament the loss of fruit and the succulent heirlooms that the little garden had produced all summer, but the lord began to awaken my spirit to a different thought. Yes, the death of a process, a ministry, a season can be painfully awkward and a time of nervous anticipation of what might come next, but, there has to be a “death” for a new work to begin. You see, to be like Christ, something which we all should try to be, we need to put to death the old ways and live according to His Spirit; which is at work in all believers. Romans 8: 13 says: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

So, what does Mr.Great Plains Poet do? I am to put to death all things that I hold dear, the things I have carved out for myself, and we all have those, the things that I have kept hidden and the things that are not of God. I truly want to live; to live according to His purposes and attain a more excellent way to walk with Him.
We get so wrapped up in death. We focus a lot of energy and time in preventing it, avoiding it and running from the sorrow and lesson of death. I won’t get into the pain of our own deaths and our loved one’s physical deaths here. That is for another post. But, I am talking about the state of our hearts now. We are so afraid to lay bare our hearts to the Lord; for examination, for perfection and for healing. We will never be able to move into a more mature relationship in the Lord if we fear death and hold tightly to a dream, sin or a striving that God didn’t put there in the first place.

As I try to mature in this faith I walk out daily, I need to not suckle the milk any longer; but be consuming the solid food the Lord has for me. Hebrews 5: 13&14 says this: “for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”
Now, this morning, as I continue to write this and gazed out my window at my wife’s tomato plant, two things the Lord has revealed to me.
#1. Even though the tomato is done growing and that fruit will die off, the seed inside is protected by the ice surrounding it for a season. The tomato will eventually decay, fall apart and leave its seed to fall to the fertile ground to continue in a new season somewhere down the road.
#2. Because of the willing death of that fruit, a new, more powerful, more Spirit inspired, season can begin; especially when we accept what God is doing in our hearts and allow His perfect peace to take hold of our paths.
I was reading this morning and was touched by this passage in the bible; another great example of our Lord Jesus’ sacrifice and provision. “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death–that is, the devil–and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death”. Hebrews 2: 14&15.
Please take hold of this in your heart and run with it like a dog with a stick in its mouth. Let the joy of the Lord rest in your heart as you turn the page on a new season. Today, make a change in your life and let Jesus “kiss your morning with frost”.
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God Bless you in your new season.
The Great Plains Poet, a living sacrifice, presenter of a laid bare heart and worshiper of the lover of my soul.

Kissing The Morning With Frost
by Chris T.

Awaking anew, and, there has been a change.
To my morning, to my life.
As I slumbered, something wonderful has taken place,
A genesis, a birth, of a season, of a new covenant.

As the dog-days of summer have passed,
Your brush stroke was complete and regenerating.
For you have taken out your palate embossed,
Kissing the morning with frost.

All things have now stopped their efforts, their striving,
To be perfect, to be something other than you intended.
Now, in your flawless plan, all fruit will be lost.
Kissing the morning with frost.

This dawning signpost, the new work that is to come.
It has been heralded by your climate change.
As if to say: “Prepare, for a different cost”
For you have kissed the morning with your frost.

Leaves have turned and gently die, gliding to the ground.
You bring death, to us, to everything,
So the pain of a new birth will begin like a sheen that’s newly glossed,
Kissing the morning with Frost.