Hymn remembered thinking of Tonga and the Pacific

Tectonic plates beneath the ocean's surface,
uplifted, twisting life and limb and wave.
The landscape that was home has lost its features,
we wonder there are any 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.

Words: Andrew Pratt (born 1948) © 2011 (alt by author 2022) Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England, 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.

Metre: 11.10.11.10.

Suggested tunes: Highwood (StF 3; H&P 236); Intercessor (H&P 411)