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Easter hymn – We cannot speculate, or glance

An empty tomb is just empty. It took a meeting with Jesus to convince a woman, then a group of men that Jesus, who had died on a cross, was alive. It is still difficult to believe. Yet after two thousand years, whatever we believe, as Geoffrey Best has written on Facebook, ‘…in this (hi)story is the revelation of the very nature of God, a God who takes all that we throw and absorbs and transforms the dead and deadly into life abundant .... if we let it!’ Amen!

1	We cannot speculate, or glance 
	into the well of history. 
	Nor can we look beyond this time 
	with any sense of certainty. 
	We only have our faith and hope, 
	to make us stand, to help us cope.
	
2	Great God we grasp at straws of faith,
	of things we hope will point to you. 
	We read the ancient texts and scan 
	those distant myths to make them new. 
	And all the time we live between 
	these metaphors and what is seen.
	
3	The past is gone, we cannot hear 
	more than an echo down the age. 
	And what is still to come we fear; 
	we see each other's pent up rage.
	Yet what we need is close at hand, 
	your present love in every land.
	
4	True resurrection brings to bear 
	the things that heal, create, unite. 
	Love launches its triumphant praise 
	and builds on joy and will delight.
	The former things are passed away, 
	dead night transformed to brightest day.

Metre: 8 8 8 8 8 8 Tune: ABINGDON
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.

Art © Andrew Pratt 2022

	


	
	






	
	

		
Good Friday hymn – Tortured, beaten…
	


	

		

So often our Good Friday hymns soften diminish the horror - ‘glorious scars’, ‘wondrous cross’. I wrote these words as a reaction…

Tortured, beaten, scarred and tainted,
Not a picture deftly painted,
More a tattered, battered being,
Torn, disfigured, stark, unseeing.

Muscles twisted, strained, contorted,
Body dangling, bruised, distorted.
Life blood drying, sun-baked, stinging,
Hatred, bitter hatred, flinging.

Crowds insensate, tempers vented,
Full of anger, discontented.
Curses scattered, insults flying,
Spurned, derided, God is dying.


Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)	
Words © 1997 © 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.

8 8 8 8 Trochaic
CLONMACHNOISE




	


	
	










	
	

		
A hymn for Holy Week – Rising gloom surrounds the story
	


	

		

Rising gloom surrounds the story,
Jesus moves towards the cross,
here Jerusalem is waiting,
favour swings from gain to loss.

Crowds had swarmed in adulation,
many came infused with hope.
Every person sought an outcome,
nothing seemed beyond his scope.

Zealots called for liberation, 
sinners waited on his word,
children ran with palms to meet him,
felt affirmed by what they heard.

Other people simply bustled,
thought their lives beyond reproach,
when the Lord came riding humbly,
hardly noticed his approach.

In the temple, tables turning,
those in power were disabused
as he showed the way to worship
for the poor, despised, abused.

Choices faced him in the garden,
prayer was dry, betrayal lurked;
while his closest friends were sleeping,
human evil waited, worked.

What is left? some trumped-up charges?
Self-conceit? Religious hate?
Here the Christ still stands before us -
time for judgement ... crosses wait.

Andrew E. Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2006 © 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.
8 7 8 7 
ADORATION (Hunt)