Author: Andrew Pratt

We rise and look around us:
all life that breathes or lives,
has shared a common construct
its composition gives.
A careful, complex coding
embodies what we see,
but how we treat each other
defines what we might be.

The cosmos seethes with sadness,
lament infuses prayer,
we cry with one another,
and strength is grounded there.
Yet we are still confounded,
by things we cannot grasp,
for we are only human:
our ignorance will last.

All life is short and finite,
we sometimes live a lie,
that we are born immortal,
yet love will never die.
Beyond this time of living,
through what we see as death
God’s coded love is spanning
our last, our final breath.

Written in response to Professor Peter Howdle’s Seminar on Healthy intercessions
Words © 2019 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.
Tune: ELLACOMBE (StF 311)
Metre: 7.6.7.6 D