Category: Hymns

Broken buildings, flooded rivers – a hymn for Pakistan amid the floods

1          Broken buildings, flooded rivers
            foaming like a liquid hell;
            jagged rocks and raging waters,
            currents twisting break the swell
            into such a tortured maelstrom;
            people reach and lives are saved;
            human beings loved and treasured
            where the waters heaved and raved.

2          Devastation, ruined farmland,
            crops destroyed compound the threat,
            images assail our conscience,
            sights we never will forget;
            here where homes had offered comfort
            degradation meets our eyes,
            while the thunder of the waters
            drowns the sound of human cries.

3          God, we cry, as lives are wasted,
            hold us when all else is lost;
            where the floods have brought destruction
            hold us, help us share this cost.
            Lift us out of dereliction,
            help us reach to those in need,
            love them till all fear has foundered,
            till they know they’re safe and freed.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)

Metre: 8 7 8 7 D

Tune: HYFRYDOL

Words © 2022 © 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., adapted from ‘Swirling winds and raging oceans’ © 2017 Stainer and Bell Ltd.

Ralph Vaughan Williams – I anticipate an interesting lecture…

Marking the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams on 12th October 1872 at Down Amney, Gloucestershire, our Hymn Society member, John Crothers, will be delivering a Lecture, as part of the Islington Proms, on Monday, 12th September at St James’ Church, Prebend Street, Islington, London N1 starting at 7.30 pm.

The Lecture is entitled:

Ralph Vaughan Williams: An unlikely visionary  

(What drove Vaughan Williams, a ‘cheerful agnostic’, to spend three years editing The English Hymnal?)

Tickets cost £5.00 and may be booked online or purchased at the door on the evening of the event.

As an optional extra, preceding the Lecture at 4.30 pm (for which admission is FREE), is a screening of  O Thou Transcendent: The Life of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Tony Palmer’s full-length film biography of the composer.

Searing incandescent spirit – a hymn inspired by Hebrews 12:18-29 especially v. 12 – 29 – Hymn for the third Sunday in August

1 Searing incandescent spirit,
melting rock and churning foam,
turning chaos into comfort
formed the planet where we roam.
Now we recollect the story
of the cosmic photo-call
when the universe was forming
earth, the cradle of us all.

2 By this spirit prophets speaking
challenged power and brought down thrones,
pointed people to the Godhead,
moved them from their comfort zones;
turned their minds from selfish pleasure,
marking wrong and putting right,
led them from each ego’s desert,
from their introspective blight.

3 Now the spirit doused all people,
no-one could escape this shower;
sons and mothers, fathers, daughters,
felt this rhythmic, dancing power;
soon all nations heard the clamour,
every language known on earth
called to every nation living,
join with love and find new-birth.

Andrew E Pratt

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: 8 7 8 7 D
Tune: LUX EOI

Once a prophet pictured Israel – A hymn inspired by Isaiah 5: 1-7 for the second Sunday in August


1 Once a prophet pictured Israel,
like a vineyard, overgrown,
no more fruitful, judged and broken,
left to ruin, overthrown.


2 In the tone hear disappointment
in the prophet’s call and cry,
seeing bloodshed wound his nation,
justice now a living lie.


3 Trampled waste land, good for nothing,
barren, fruitless, destitute,
is this now the way God sees us,
arid earth that feeds no root?


4 Or are we a fruitful people,
sown in faith to nurture grace,
bringing hope to all the nations,
love sustained in every place?


Andrew Pratt
Words © 2011 © 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: CROSS OF JESUS

Hiroshima Day Poem

Hiroshima Day Poem – Hiroshima Day is designated as August 6th

This can be used as a responsive prayer

As we remember holocaust,
in horror disbelieving
the history of the human race,
we share each other’s grieving;
God purge us of hypocrisy,
of all our self-deceiving.

Our language is inadequate,
unfit for the expression
of hatred that we visualise,
humanity’s confession;
we hurry headlong into hell,
we witness love’s regression.

The deepest, distant agony
that throbs through all creation,
the silent tears that quietly fall
in every generation,
are signs of our humanity,
our need for re-creation.

God give us strength to make a pledge
to move beyond contention,
to see, in each, humanity.
Through greater good intention,
God, move us toward a purer love,
a gracious intervention.

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.