Hymns – Page 76 – hymnsandbooks

Life now with Covid-19 – We cannot see the future (hymn/poem)

We cannot see the future,
nor live as in the past,
our time the present moment,
yet know this will not last.
But can a human construct
give answers or make sense
as everyone will struggle
with this, the present tense?

Our understanding staggers,
but what can history prove?
What scripture has a message
to help us rest or move?
The wilderness was testing
a place to learn and think,
a sudden unthought action
might push us to the brink.

So in this present moment
the greatest gift is time,
a time of recollection
before life’s upward climb.
And can our faith sustain us?
Or simple human love?
While waiting in the valley
we lift our eyes above.

The heavens will not answer,
but through each silent night
the stars might make us wonder
at their insistent light.
We live within an instant,
as finite as our breath,
suspended in a moment
between our life and death.

What matters in this moment
is how we love and live,
is how we treat each other,
of how we share and give;
to speculate is pointless,
this is the earth we know,
this edifice of living:
what will OUR loving show?

Andrew Pratt 5/5/2020
Words © 2020 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.
Tunes: THORNBURY; CRUGER

Now is the coda of our time – hymn, lyrical poem when confronting death

Now is the coda of our time
with those we value most on earth,
may we fulfil our finite role
and love confirm our deepest worth.

This chorus that we joined at birth:
life’s gentle, joyful, solemn song,
expresses all that life contains
of gifted good to chosen wrong.

Then, as we sense that life will end,
the closing bars should speak of joy,
uplifted by our faith and hope
let us enhance, and not destroy.

So let the melody go on,
until we grasp our final breath,
as healing interweaves such love:
God’s counterpoint to human death.

Senses sharpened in the silence – Praise in time of Covid-19

Senses sharpened in the silence plus oak Photo ©Andrew Pratt 2020

Senses sharpened in the silence,
gently, quietly, feel your breath,
know God’s love will never leave us,
now, or in our time of death.
In this time imagine bird song,
thunder of a mountain stream,
slap of waves along the shoreline,
things for which we hope or dream.

All the beauty of the starlight,
rainbow colours in the sky,
things that we can just imagine
feed our minds until we die,
fill our hearts with heightened wonder,
strain the sinews of our thought,
soon exhausting human language,
through the images we’ve caught.

Lifted up within the mystery,
now embodied in our praise,
mystic music moves our being,
sounding notes from phrase to phrase,
raising us beyond the present,
held in loving symphony;
God inspire our hearts with singing
in one cosmic harmony.

Andrew Pratt 19/4/2020
Words © 2020 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: CALON LAN

Where is the care for the silent care-giver?

Where is the care for the silent care-giver,
drowning in tragedy, lost or alone?
Where is our God in such life and such living?
Here in our pain, or remote on some throne?

God, are you deaf to our crying, our pleading?
Why are you absent when we feel so lost?
Come to the centre of need and exhaustion,
help us feel valued, while sharing the cost.

Here in frustration, in folly, when kindness
seems to be hollow, not grasping the fact:
inside our hearts may be broken or dying.
God bring your mending to lives that have cracked.

Then for tomorrow may hope that is buried
push through our anger, our darkness and night,
opening our hearts to divine love and healing,
leading from hopelessness out into light.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Tune: STEWARDSHIP
Metre: 11 10 11 10
Words © 2014 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.

Each hour marks a mighty resurrection

Each hour marks a mighty resurrection,
a time of overcoming fate and fear,
the dawning of a common understanding
in which the grace of God is drawing near.

Each morning brings a sense of new creation.
New life, new love, encompasses the earth.
New time, new light illuminates the distance,
as though the world is coming, fresh, to birth.

Each evening brings a stunning revelation,
as stars and planets hove into our view,
beyond imagination and reflection,
these scattered bangles flung against the blue.

Each season brings a sense of co-existence,
relatedness of heartbeat, rhythm, rhyme;
and every year the cycle goes on spinning,
affirming faith and love through endless time.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Tune: HIGHWOOD
Words copyright © 2017 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.