Welcome to our weekly FMF writing prompt link-up!
If you’re new to Five Minute Friday, we gather every week around a single word prompt and freewrite for five minutes flat. Sound like fun? Join us! 🙂
I’m taking the month off from Facebook and Instagram, so make sure you’re subscribed to the FMF email list so you don’t miss any important announcements!
This week’s FMF writing prompt is: REFRAIN
A week or two into the stay-at-home order, I pulled out a copy of the Trinity Hymnal that I bought years ago at a garage sale or secondhand store.
I sat down at the out-of-tune, upright piano we got for free and began turning the pages, waiting to land on a familiar verse.
With each song that jogged my memory, I read the lyrics and slowly plonked out the notes with my right hand, careful to observe all the sharps and flats.
Page after page, song after song, truth after truth.
The lyrics both anchored me and lifted my eyes and heart at the same time. Each song, each refrain was filled with remarkable praise and worship, even in the midst of the great hardships and difficulties described by the writers.
I couldn’t help but think about how the majority of the hymn writers had faced much greater trials than a few weeks or months “stuck” at home.
Before I sat down, I had no idea how refreshing and grounding the hour on that bench would be for my soul.
I stopped up only when I thought my family had had enough, though nobody verbally complained. As I stood up and closed the book, I felt lighter.
Though we may have to refrain from certain liberties and activities temporarily, may we keep a constant refrain of praise in our souls.
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Join the link-up with your own five-minute freewrite below, then visit your link-up neighbor to read their post and leave an encouraging comment!
Wow, Kate, I love your new color palette here. Outstanding! I hope you are doing well on your time-off and are seeing the Lord guide you during this time of reflection! God bless you dear friend.
Thank you so much, Erendira!
Andrew went down very hard today. The posting in the link-up is what he had intended for this week, but it wasn’t quite finished.
We ask your patience with any errors or inconsistent bits, and with what will likely be a slow response to comments (which we value highly).
We also ask your prayers. Cancer sucks.
Thank you Kate for every week’s prompt. With all that’s going on out there and in my personal life, this keeps me kindv grounded, to write with a caring community.
I haven’t been able to visit the other fantastic writers here, my apologies. Will do my best.
R.
So glad it’s been helpful, Ray!
Super clean updates to the site.
Thanks, Susan!
Dying winter cried “Be still!”
but tulips could not refrain
from dancing.
Love your take on refrain, especially that last part to ‘keep a constant refrain of praise in our souls.”
“The refrain of praise”! Hallelujah and Amen!
Back with a sonnet.
Humility, yeah, that’s an issue.
An iron giant of the night,
I stride across the tumbled plain
in full strength and fearful might,
singing out my glad refrain,
a hymn to give the nations pause,
for I will never be deterred,
beholden only to my laws,
a privilege so richly earned
through the strife and calumny
from which I have lately come,
from despair and agony,
from demons that I rode among
to stand astride a shaking world
and pledge my troth unto the Lord.