Hymn for Epiphany – Like butterflies emerging in the cold

Around Christmas, in 2010, I was leading worship when a butterfly fluttered down and landed on the pulpit. It was brightly coloured and, in the cold of winter, utterly out of place…and so a hymn fitting for the 6th January, Epiphany…

1	Like butterflies emerging in the cold, 
	incongruous strangers punctuate this birth; 
	while snow and frosted windows paint the scene
	and God in human flesh has come to earth.
	
2	Exotic strangers, carried on the wind, 
	the wind of wisdom, fathomed by their thought. 
	Obscure and out of place, these coloured robes, 
	as out of place as all the gifts they brought.
	
3	And yet they have a place in every play, 
	in signalling God's universal grace, 
	that those who fit and others who are strange,
	are held by God in every time and place.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2015 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England copyright@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: 10 10 10 10
Tune ELLERS; HIGHLAND CATHEDRAL