Poems – Page 38 – hymnsandbooks

Hymn for Remembrance

Hymn for Remembrance: This fragile, passing beauty

This fragile, passing beauty,
this autumn, red and gold,
a season’s recollection:
love never will grow cold.
The seasons change and fracture,
the leaves of green turn brown,
as life seems tinged with sadness,
as petals flutter down.

This time of our remembrance
that reaches back to pain,
the chill of recollection
can open wounds again;
But this we must remember
that human war and hate
are matters of our choosing
and not some random fate.

God let this time of grieving,
of memory and regret,
enable reparation,
in case we just forget.
Fill human hearts with courage,
frame human words with grace,
that love might flow among us,
make Earth a sacred place.

Metre: 76.76.D

See Notes from Singing the Faith plus: Written with a lovely Norwegian folk melody in mind:

“Bred dina vida vingar”. This is widely available online and in Andrew Pratt’s own collection, Reclaiming Praise: hymns from a spiritual journey No.142. Arrangements of the tune can be heard at https://youtu.be/V6dDt3OJf6Q (violin).

An offered alternative is Aurelia (StF 690); but for a tune whose key change reflects the mood shift half through each verse, try Wolvercote (StF 563i).

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.

God still needs prophets – old hymn perhaps for now?

God still needs prophets who will rage,

against discrimination,

who speak God’s words amid despair,

to this and every nation;

who reach again with nail scarred hands,

into the pain we’re feeling,

to hold us when we weep at loss,

who bring a hope of healing.

God still needs prophets who will hold

a mirror to our blindness,

to show us, each and everyone,

how hollow is our kindness;

how empty are our words of love

when shrouded in derision,

how clever words can’t justify

unloving indecision.

God still needs prophets who ignore

religions that confine us,

who magnify our words of love

through actions to refine us.

May we be prophets through our words

and in our hands of healing,

that others might see Christ in us

while Christ to us revealing.

Andrew Pratt 23/11/2008

Words © 2015 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England copyright@stainer.co.uk . Pleaseinclude any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All widerand any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.

Great God, your love has held our lives – Remembrance Hymn

1	Great God, your love has held our lives
	through all the years down to this day.
	Your constant presence held us fast:
	remain with us we plead and pray.
	We've seen the ruins left by war,
	the tumbled buildings, street by street;
	some heard the voices that they loved
	and cried for those they'd no more meet.
	
2	As time moves on some memories fade,
	some griefs we shared lie in the past;
	for others pain is just as sharp,
	we know their hurt will always last.
	Some human acts have swept away
	our partners, parents, children, friends,
	some people we had never known;
	the memory lives and never ends.
	
3	Beyond this day we try to live:
	a sinew of each life survives,
	but where is God in hurt and hate?
	The questions stay to haunt our lives.
	Help us to build a better world
	not fuelled by vengeance, fed by greed;
	a world in which we all can live,
	what ever colour, race or creed.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
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: LMD
Tune: JERUSALEM

Other resources: Worshipcloud

Now hell is here

Now hell is here, and words are cheap,

a bloodied sheet, a shattered bed…

as women, men and children weep,

while prayer is silent, felt not said.

With seeds of vengeance sown not sought,

while roots in hearts of flesh, not stone,

bring carnage traced with quiet thought

as guilt will fester none will own.

And distantly, in muffled sighs,

of deep regret and dark despair

we wring our hands and harbour lies,

dare not admit the blame we share.

Suggested tune: ROCKINGHAM

God and Money – Matthew 22:15-22

Challenged about the rightness of paying taxes, Jesus showed the Pharisees a coin and then
said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” When they replied correctly he
responded, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God
the things that are God’s.”
So what do we owe to the State? And what to God?

1 What is our ultimate concern?
Where is the centre of each soul?
What are the things that matter most?
What single sense will make us whole?

2 We recognize the depth of love,
the grace that held us from our birth,
but all too soon we lose our grasp
and other things have greater worth.

3 The things we own, the clothes we wear,
usurp the place that God should hold,
become our idols, cloak our minds
as if our faith was lost or sold.

4 The God that we purport to serve,
to love with heart and soul and mind,
is lost within our self concern
yet still is there to seek and find.

5 So God, we come to start again;
to clear the clutter from our lives,
to see you in each neighbour’s face,
to find the faith that holds and strives.

Andrew Pratt (born 1948)
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 8 8 8
Tune: MELCOMBE