Tectonic plates beneath the ocean’s surface,
uplifted, twisting life and limb and wave.
The landscape that was home has lost its features,
destruction means that few are left to save.
An empty chair amid such devastation
where cars like toys, are lifted, spun about;
and here we wait and pray in helpless anguish;
and ‘where is God’ we want to cry and shout.
Incarnate God we need your present spirit
to live within your people at this time,
to energise our prayerful words and actions,
to offer grace to life’s discordant rhyme.
God offer hope to those who feel forsaken,
to those whose lives have spun and turned around;
to those whose grief defies all consolation,
bring grace and love and hope and solid ground.
Andrew Pratt originally written 13/3/2011
Tune: INTERCESSOR or LORD OF THE YEARS
Words © Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England,
http://www.stainer.co.uk.
Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Translated into Japanese and sung on Sunday 20th March 2011 in Holy Trinity Church, Tokyo.
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