hymnsandbooks

God’s words have such a weight – a hymn inspired by John 1

1          God’s words have such a weight
            that read, or heard or thought,
            we sense an emphasis of love.
            And such a love Christ brought.

2          The Word became a man
            that human eyes could see,
            a man who knew the pain of life
            as heaven’s refugee.

3          The echo of that Word
            has rung from age to age
            whenever love has conquered creed
            when God had centre stage.

4          And is that Word still heard?
            And does the Christ still sing?
            When love cuts through our prejudice
            yes! yes, God’s word will ring!

Andrew E Pratt

Words © 2003 © 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: SM

Tunes: CARLISLE; FRANCONIA

A More Excellent Way – Inderjit Bhogal – Theology Everywhere blog

Inderjit Bhogal reflects on A More Excellent Way

Loving, compassionate and welcoming responses to refugees arriving in the UK across the English Channel are lighting up ways to challenge hostility with protective hospitality…..

Where the jackals scratch a living – hymn – prepare the way of the LORD

Isaiah 40:3 A voice cries out: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God”.



1	Where the jackals scratch a living, 

	in this wild, deserted place, 

	springs will bring refreshing water, 

	grass and reeds will sign God's grace. 

	

2	Here our God will build a highway 

	striding out across the land, 

	bringing hope to what was barren, 

	once again the people stand.

	

3	Once again a smile is dawning 

	on the face of every man, 

	all the children play together, 

	women talk, it's time to plan.

	

4	As we tell, recount the story, 

	in this present time and place, 

	may we build in recollection, 

	room for hope and gracious space;

	

5	Space where God can offer comfort 

	through our human words and lives, 

	love that shows in every instance 

	faith can live and hope survives.



© Andrew Pratt  Words © 2010 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: 8 7 8 7 

Tune: ALL FOR JESUS

A REFLECTION AS ADVENT BEGINS

Some churches, on the Sunday before Advent, celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. It offers a high spot before we descend into the darkness as we prepare for the coming of the Light of the World at Christmas. The more I think about this, the more strange it seems.

Once the Kingship of Christ made sense. I loved to sing ‘Majesty, worship His majesty’. Now it seems a bit out of kilter with what we read about Jesus. Let me reflect for a moment.

We read that 2000 or so years ago bureaucracy uprooted people. Foreign troops occupied a country. Native politicians and religious leaders juggled their own privileges and prejudices with advancement and preferment. And common people became pawns to be taxed, manipulated according their economic value to the ruling class. People counted, and needed to be counted.

Times don’t change it seems.

If we take the story literally Mary and Joseph were subjects of a census.

Set aside for a moment the Magi and shepherds, the angels and the star. ‘Long way from your home’, a baby was born. Within a short time, days? More likely a year or two, that baby was threatened as babies have been, and have been killed, in our own time, in our so called civilised world. Politics demand that difficult decisions have to be made.

Difficult decisions: so often a euphemism for oppression, diminution or judicial killing.

Majesty? A child threatened with death in the arms of his parents seeking asylum in another country. Not Majesty as we would recognise it, not a life-style choice.

If we believe that this child was God born among us, this is no majestic king, victorious, but a vulnerable baby trusted to parents fleeing persecution and death. And it challenges me to see Christ this Christmas, not in the palaces of the powerful but, more likely in the vulnerable and persecuted.

Remember that this baby grew up to be a man. Entrusted to those young vulnerable parents he was later to say ‘the son of man has nowhere to lay his head’. He understood poverty and homelessness. Then when he says, ‘whatever you did for the least of these, you do it for me’, he knew what it was like to be least in society. No wonder, in the title of an Anglican report some years ago he had a ‘Bias to the Poor’; not to ‘Lord’ it over one another.

Our God trusted human parents to care for him, and lived out an example for humanity to follow his example of trust, reliance and care in relationship to each other. ‘Love one another’.

So as we move toward Christmas let us hold onto something of the reality of the Biblical story, a story that is is awe-inspiring. This is much more than a time for children dressing up and playing games. More a wake-up call for us all, to realise that whenever we visit the prisoner, welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, provide water for the thirsty we again meet Christ, see God in those we greet… It is a wake-up call, a reminder that we find God-head, not in the powerful or majestic, not in the robes and honours of politics or religion, not in places of domination or repression, but in vulnerability and love. Truly within us and among us.

May God in Christ bless us all.

Andrew Pratt (originally written for the Mid-Cheshire Circuit of the Methodist Church 27/11/2023)

If he had come – a poem for Advent and Christmas by Marjorie Dobson

If he had come …

If he had come as a king with a robe and jewels

and a crown of gold,

he would have been impressive.

But there would have been those

who envied him his wealth,

tried to steal his jewels,

or attempted to rob him of his crown.

If he had come with a sword and shield

and a following army,

he would have demanded obedience.

But there would have been those

who feared his sword,

claimed he was hiding behind his shield,

or accused him of using military force to conquer them.

If he had come as a priest with elaborate vestments,

sanctimonious speeches and zealous religious rituals,

he would have commanded respect.

But there would have been those

who found his vestments ostentatious,

suspected him of hypocrisy in his speeches,

or felt unable to live up to

the impossible regulation of his religion.

So, when Jesus came as a vulnerable baby,

grew up in a carpenter’s workshop

and walked around in everyday clothes,

meeting and talking to people about God,

it really was a revelation.

Jesus brought no threat of wealth, or force of might,

or blocking of the pathway to God.

He was a man and of the people

and though his robe was stained with blood,

his crown made of thorns

and his death an ignominious execution,

the power of his life has everlasting authority.