Category: Photos

Holocaust Memorial Day – When words are spent – a new hymn

When words are spent and grief destroys compassion, 
or fear of war throws shadows like a cross, 
God melt our hearts and fire imagination, 
that we might sense the pain within each loss.
 
This loss can blind our eyes and freeze our feeling, 
can numb for us the pain of holocaust, 
for memory fades, to leave just words revealing
a horror far beyond all human cost.
 
God open in our present generation, 
a depth of human empathy to feel 
humanity that bridges every nation, 
that only love and hope and grace can seal.

Andrew Pratt 10/1/2023
Words © 2023 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: 11.10.11.10
Tune: INTERCESSOR
https://www.methodist.org.uk/our-faith/worship/singing-the-faith-plus/posts/holocaust-memorial-day-2023/

Auschwitz – Birkenau – the end of the line

Remembrance – Once crimson poppies bloomed out in a foreign field

Once crimson poppies bloomed
out in a foreign field,
each memory reminds
where brutal death was sealed.
The crimson petals flutter down,
still hatred forms a thorny crown.

For in this present time
we wait in vain for peace;
each generation cries,
each longing for release,
while war still plagues the human race
and families seek a hiding place.
           
How long will human life
suffer for human greed?
How long must race or pride,
wealth, nationhood or creed
be reasons justifying death
to suffocate a nation’s breath?
           
For everyone who dies
we share a quiet grief;
the pain of loss remains,
time rarely brings relief:
and so we will remember them
and heaven sound a loud amen.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948) Words © 2012 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.
Metre: 6 6 6 6 8 8 Tune: LITTLE CORNARD