A Lament for Palestine and Israel
Unknowing babies sleep now,
exhausted without food,
while mothers cry in anguish –
this lottery is crude:
when missiles, ‘with precision’,
seek targets, hid, unseen,
as leaders point the finger
so consciences are clean.
Amid this dust and carnage
where human life is cheap,
where body parts are scattered
we turn our heads and weep,
yet this is soon forgotten,
the image fades, has gone,
another channel chosen
we sing a soothing song.
In this we are immersed now,
our pain will soon be lost,
the anguished cries diminished,
we need not bear the cost.
A distant drum is beating,
we’re deaf to hear its sound
a tiny body buried ,
in seared, unhallowed ground.
And mothers still are sobbing
while fathers shed salt tears,
and lives are marked by hours now,
yet mem’ries seethe for years.
How long, O God, can terror
be harboured in a mind?
How long before Your children
are nurtured to be kind?
© Andrew Pratt 14/11/2023
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.
Tune: NYLAND H&P 478II, REJOICE AND SING 529
Category: Song
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
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
Hymn of Seasons
From season to season,
through death and re-birth,
this world, through its phases,
shows love has no dearth.
Such love is for sharing,
to do good to all,
to nurture well-being,
to echo God's call.
Through sensitive reason
we fathom the need
of neighbours, of nature;
we subjugate greed.
We offer each other
the kiss of God's peace,
embracing earth's harmony,
hatred will cease.
Through summer and autumn,
through winter's release,
we welcome spring's coming
with nature's increase.
All praise for the gifting
of harvest and life,
all power to the ending
of all human strife.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2002 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 11 11 11
Tune: DATCHET
Why earthquakes? – a reflective poem
If God created all that is,
then earthquake, wind and fire
are just as much laid at God’s door,
the stakes could not be higher.
I questioned once, and just like Job,
the answer was unclear.
It seems existence on this globe
is allied to our fear.
Without a moving, fragile crust,
this earth could not bear life;
no mountains, canyons, rivers seas,
we’re balanced on a knife.
These earthquakes challenge love and hope,
can undermine our grace,
yet this our existential need:
to build love in this place.
© Andrew Pratt 9/9/2023
hymnsandbooks 