Category: Poems

Great God we need your present grace – a hymn at the time of the resignation of Boris Johnson

Great God we need your present grace,
for honesty’s been shaken.
We need integrity and truth,
enliven and awaken
a seam of trust, a sense of faith,
while life is so uncertain,
the future hidden from our sight,
opaque behind a curtain.

God give a calm and steady hand,
unshackled by ambition,
to challenge hatred and distrust,
yet not employ derision.
Give us the time to act and learn,
to unify this nation,
a place where all might live as one
in spite of rank or station.

Is it too much for us to build
in gracious love and living,
a place to care, not built on greed,
but generous in giving,
where children grow in peace with hope,
as sister and as brother,
that, hand in hand, within this world
we’ll live with one another.
Metre: 8787D iambic
Tune: CONSTANCE (Sullivan)

Andrew Pratt 7/7/2022 – Responding to the resignation of Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party
Words © 2022 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.

Idyllic beaches break the waves – a hymn relating to migration and asylum – sadly still pertinent..

These images will not be diminished by persecuting migrants, nor by making a false distinction between those seeking asylum and so called economic migrants. We need to welcome as fellow human beings people coming to our shores who are fleeing fear or poverty and to provide them with safe passage to our shores and a humanitarian reception.

1	Idyllic beaches break the waves 
	as bathers line the shore
	This view of peace is now disturbed:
	an aftermath of war.
	The ones who fled from lives they knew 
	have gone in fear and dread, 
	the ships that offered hope to them 
	are sunk with many dead.
 
2	And where is God amid the swell 
	where tides still ebb and flow,
	unfeeling of this loss of life,
	as others come and go?
	The commerce of the world goes on. 
	Can we ignore the pain?
	It is as though we're blind to see 
	Christ crucified again.
 
3	The ones who drown are ones we own 
	as neighbours we should love;
	how can we turn our eyes away, 
	avert our gaze above?
	For when our politics conspires 
	to shut the door to grace 
	it is as though we turn away 
	from Jesus' tortured face.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2015 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.

CMD
Tune: KINGSFOLD

God would not will…a hymn in a world of violence

God would not will what we have seen,
the terror, violence, death;
for God is love, the source of life,
the essence of our breath.

God would not break the damaged reed,
the smouldering wick is fanned;
yet human power, our want and greed
can counter what God planned.

Our will is free, our way we choose,
to act for good or ill,
to offer love, to calm or heal,
to damage or to kill.

God give us courage in the face
of carnage that we see,
to work for life, to live for love,
to set your people free.

Andrew E. Pratt (born 1948) (alt Andrew Pratt 13/8/2021
Words © 2006 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: CM

Searing incandescent spirit – A hymn reflecting on John 13: 34 – 35

A hymn reflecting on John 13: 34 – 35 takes us, perhaps, toward Pentecost…

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.



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.


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.


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

Romans 13: 8 – 14 – Am I in debt? Meditation: Am I in debt?

Am I in debt?


Surely!


In debt for the love you have given me.
Undeserving, sometimes callous, thoughtless and cavalier with the expectations
of others. Yet I am loved.
And so I owe this debt of love.
How can it be paid?
How do I repay the patience of a nurse who stands by me while I am sick?
How do I return the love of a mother who invested her life in my life from birth
to her death?
How do I thank those people who affirm me in what I do, in writing and in
teaching?
How do I thank the teacher who told me, but then demonstrated that from his
point of view there was some good in everyone?
How do I thank my son for music, art and an openness of spirit?
How do I thank colleagues who have stood by and encouraged me as my life has
changed pace and direction often giving them more work to do?
How do I thank my wife for her care?
How do I thank the child who smiles and hugs me and says, ‘That’s better’?
How do I thank countless friends who have done the things that only they could
do?
How do I thank the father who taught me to work with wood?
So much to be thankful for!
Am I in debt?
Surely…

To each and all is owed a lifetime of love, so graciously given, so easily received.

No wonder he said, ‘Love one another”!
I’ll try, really I will.

Will you?