Persistent God, your gracious understanding
1 Persistent God, your gracious understanding
returns the love that often we with-hold.
When met with our resistance and denial
you greet with peace and draw us from the cold.
2 Three times you challenged Peter's frail commitment,
that stemmed from reasoned nervousness and fear.
Three times he answered that he really loved you,
you held him though he'd seemed so insincere.
3 You see beyond our actions and our motives,
you read the hope that's written in each heart,
and in this knowledge welcome home your children
by showing each and all a place and part.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2013 © 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
Tunes: HIGHWOOD; INTERCESSOR
Category: Poems
Easter now – hymn – We would be an Easter people
We would be an Easter people
1 We would be an Easter people
living resurrection now,
making all those years of promise
real, as Jesus shows us how.
2 Meeting Mary, Jesus loved her,
calling to her by her name.
Those who need the love of Jesus
we will welcome just the same.
3 'Peace be with you' was Christ's greeting
to the ones who'd let him die.
May our greeting be as gracious
to the ones who'd spurn our cry..
4 Doubting Thomas was confounded;
Jesus loved him in his doubt.
Help us welcome saint and sceptic
as we work your purpose out.
5 Let us live the resurrection
in each time, in every place.
Let us live as Easter people,
true to Jesus' boundless grace.
Andrew E. Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2003, 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
Metre: 8 7 8 7
Tune: CHARLESTON
Easter Hymn _ Doubt, composed in whispered voices
1 Doubt, composed in whispered voices,
nailed their thoughts through waiting days:
days of shattered expectation,
days devoid of love or praise.
Boulders blocked imagination
like the stone that sealed the tomb,
startled, frightened, apprehensive,
shut inside an upper room.
2 At the point of desolation,
when their conversation stilled,
in the midst Christ stood before them,
Christ abandoned, tortured, killed.
'Peace be with you', words now spoken,
words of grace to cut the air,
but those words would burn each conscience,
branding hurt already there.
3 Jesus eyes and body language,
spoke of boundless love and grace,
but disciples, eyes averted,
hardly looked into his face.
Yet his voice still echoed softly
till his friends began to see
love renewing, reconciling,
love rebuilding, setting free.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2012 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 D
Tune: DIM OND IESU
Easter morning hymn – Such shock had greeted women
Easter morning hymn - Such shock had greeted women
1 Such shock had greeted women
arriving at the tomb;
the place was stark and empty.
Was this a stone-cold womb?
A second life had beckoned
the body, come and gone.
Yet Mary stood there weeping,
warmed by the rising sun.
2 Long shadows greeted mourning,
the light could trick and turn;
a gardener was waiting,
she struggled to discern;
reality was breaking,
denying common sense,
for Jesus offered greeting,
there, in the present tense.
3 And others met this Jesus,
each heard a different call,
two thousand years thereafter
God seeks to meet us all.
The spirit is God’s presence,
that spirit meets our need
as love is planted in us,
a quietly growing seed.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2020 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: 7 6 7 6 D
Tune: PASSION CHORALE
God hung and died upon the cross
God hung and died upon the cross
God hung and died upon the cross,
and there he suffered wild abuse,
the ones who held religious power
had offered an oblique excuse:
denying love their greatest crime.
We see this echoed in our time.
For when we worship week by week
while poor are trampled, made more poor;
when those in need are turned away,
or sent off to another shore;
our silence signs complicity
and signals our iniquity.
But if we walk beside the ones
that others curse, berate and blame,
share in their stark reality,
their ridicule, pernicious pain;
then know that God has walked this way,
with them we'll live another day.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948) based on 1 Peter 2: 19-25
© 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 8 8 8 8 8
Tune: ABINGDON
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