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A still small voice, the crumbling earth lies silent – a poem after a devastating earthquake.

A still small voice, the crumbling earth lies silent  - a poem after a devastating earthquake. 

A still small voice, the crumbling earth lies silent, 
a baby suckled at her mother’s breast, 
feels flesh grow cool as she lies quietly dying, 
no comfort now, no warmth, no earthly rest. 

And where is God amid this dust, these ashes? 
Is this God’s plan, this random, rancid death? 
Where is the blessing in these crumbling buildings 
where silent bodies drew a final breath? 

The dust, a pall, obscures the teasing sunrise. 
See, dawn’s temptation to arise, to wake. 
But this dishonest call is, empty, hollow 
to any who’ve survived this this night, this quake. 

What now? The still, small voice still quietly questions: 
there is no consolation for this pain, 
but mid the dust and rubble of this carnage, 
humanity might rise in hope again.
©Andrew Pratt 7/2/2023

The day after the earthquakes in Turkey, Syria and the surrounding regions. Reposted after earthquake in Taiwan.









Tectonic plates beneath this rock hard surface -the Turkish-Syrian earthquakes 2023

1	Tectonic plates beneath this rock hard surface, 

	uplifted, twisting life and limb and steel. 

	The landscape that was home has lost its features, 

	destruction means that few are left to heal. 

	

2	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.

	

3	Incarnate God we need your present spirit 

	to live within your people at this time, 

	to energise our prayerful words and action, 

	to offer grace to life's discordant rhyme.

	

4	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.



Andrew Pratt (born 1948)

© 2011 Stainer & Bell Ltd. Alt 6/2/2023 by the author.

11 10 11 10

Tunes: INTERCESSOR; LORD OF THE YEARS
On the day of the earthquakes in Turkey, Syria and the surrounding areas.

Earthquake- iPad art (c) Andrew Pratt 2023

Thoughts on Grace

Grace is uncondionally and universally extended to all. The human response to this is ‘that cannot be’. How can Grace be given to those who…? In consequence humanity, over generations, has constructed conditions to be met. or ways in which this might be enabled (Atonement theories). This is only necessary because the concept of universal unconditional Grace is beyond human understanding, it is a mystery which we, perhaps, need to face with honest agnosticism. 

Grace ‘never passed by one, or it had passed by me’ (Charles Wesley).