Category: worship

Hiroshima Day – a possible hymn

Hiroshima Day is marked every year on 6 August, the day in 1945 on which the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima in Japan. 
The film Oppenheimer explores some of the ethical questions related to this event. Others have questioned its rights and wrongs since 1945.

The following poem/hymn was written  in response to the photo of a little boy rescued from a bombed building in Allepo in Syria. Equally it is evocative of children everywhere suffering whenever we settle our disputes through war or violence.

It speaks as much to our vision of a destroyed city as to the cries of a single child:

A bloodied child foreshadowed by a cross,
both share their taste of evil and of loss,
and when will people ever live and learn
that hurt and harm is all that war can earn?

We hold our breath in horror as we view
this scene forever old, forever new;
amid the dust and rubble strewn around
a child cries out and parents can’t be found.

How long, O Lord we cry, each hollow word,
our pleas of peace increasingly absurd?
Good God, forgive us when inaction’s voice
speaks loudly of our violent, hurtful choice.

Words: Andrew Pratt (born 1948) © 18 August 2016 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England, 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: 10.10.10.10.
Suggested tunes: these words were written with the tune EVENTIDE (StF 141) in mind. Singing the Faith plus suggests these alternatives: THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP (StF 640) and – perhaps surprisingly – WOODLANDS  (StF 186)

Can perfect love cast out the fear and hate – a hymn inspired by a text suggested by Gordon Taylor

Can perfect love cast out the fear and hate 
Words inspired by a text suggested by Gordon Taylor at a hymn workshop of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland in Lincoln July 2023. The theme is a response to the Government’s Illegal Immigration Bill.

Can perfect love cast out the fear and hate 
that festers in a hardened, ravaged heart, 
when lives abandoned to a savage sea,
have hope denied, grace drowned out from the start.

As cold officials act with callous power
we sing the words that plead and pray for care,
to see humanity in each new face
to wipe away the tears of rank despair.

How long, O God, will we discard the lives, 
that you have birthed that we should seek to save, 
who caught by circumstance, or course of life,
we destine to a swirling, watery grave.

Yes perfect love can cast out fear and hate 
that festers in each hardened, ravaged heart, 
when we reach out to others in their need.
Through gracious words, new hope has power to start.

© Andrew Pratt 19/7/2023 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: 10.10.10.10
Tune: YANWORTH

A hymn inspired by Jesus use of parables and stories

He taught in puns and riddles,
in pictures wrung from words,
of gates and fields and shepherds,
of fish and flowers and herds.
These parables are potent,
ingrained with hope and grace,
infused with love and beauty,
transcending time and place.


So Jesus, Word incarnate,
became the word he spoke,
embodied loving kindness,
in whom our faith awoke.
Not just a simple shepherd,
a gate to keep the sheep,
the image offers credence
that we may safely sleep.


And every phrase he uttered,
and every step he took,
say, this is God, this shepherd,
into whose world we look.
His parables paint pictures 
of love we strain to grasp, 
beyond our comprehension, 
this love will always last.


Andrew 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: 7 6 7 6 D
Tune: DAY OF REST

The children would follow the peal of your piping – Hymn – Matthew 11: 16 – 17

A hymn inspired by Matthew 11:16-17 Jesus said, “But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn'”.

The children would follow the peal of your piping,
the ring of your reason, the joy of your love,
the children would follow, and none would deter them
from plateaus so barren to mountains above.

And those who are childlike still follow your calling;
a calling to suffer, yet dusted with hope.
The way to fulfilment, to peace and to plenty.
is fissured and rutted but still we will cope.

God's joy is the centre of all that we hope for,
a calling for everyone, not just for some;
the music is moving, can't stop ourselves singing,
still Jesus is piping and still people come!

Andrew Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 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: 12 11 12 11
Tune: STREETS OF LAREDO

Scientists pick up shock waves from colliding galaxies – a hymn…

‘The observations were made by studying signals from dead stars called pulsars. These rotate and send out bursts of radio signals at extremely precise intervals’. BBC News. This hymn references pulsars and was published 32 years ago. Available in Blinded by the Dazzle, Stainer & Bell.

1	The God of cosmic question
	Surprises by his birth,
	Not in some new dimension
	But on this ravaged earth!

2	In quasars, quarks and pulsars
	We seek the cosmic truth:
	The ground of our existence
	That set creation loose,

3	And human senses lead us,
	Through all they analyse,
	From arrogance to wonder,
	To spiritual surprise.

4	But senses have their limits:
	Unanswered still there lies
	The single, deepest question
	Our intellect supplies.

5	Yet history proffers insight:
	The Christ of time and space
	Speaks of a God incarnate
	Born in a squalid place.

6	Alive within our compass,
	Upon this ravaged earth,
	The God of cosmic question
	Surprises by his birth!

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)	
© 1991 Stainer & Bell Ltd 
7 6 7 6 Iambic