Category: worship

Peace – a hymn reflecting on Jesus’ words to his disciples

Peace…

Easter seems long past, but at a time when our minds are still being drawn to Ukraine, and politics at home feel uncertain, my thoughts have drifted back. When Jesus come to his disciples after his crucifixion he came, not with condemnation, but with peace. Perhaps we still need that assurance of peace in our own, our present time. But  step back for a moment to that upper room…

He speaks of peace while all inside 
disciples' minds are churned about; 
their memories haunt their waking time, 
while day and night are fused by doubt.
He speaks of peace while all the world 
will clamour at our open door, 
while shards of music sing and break 
with light in discord on the floor.
	
Into this chaos spirit spills,
a calming notion, 'God is good', 
and real as life, the Christ was there,
the Christ they'd hammered to the wood.
This God it is who offers peace 
to bound disciples held by fear, 
who breaks impossibilities, 
who makes the clouded way seem clear.

Into this calm we'll step and stay, 
in love's assurance find God's peace 
with those whose feet had turned to clay, 
we'll find that fear will stop, will cease.
And in this moment, in this time 
within a world so torn by death, 
again we'll try to live out peace, 
with every lasting, living breath.

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 8 8 8 D
Tune: YE BANKS AND BRAES

We are a pilgrim people – a hymn

Methodists in the area in which I live are part of the way through the Methodist Bible Month. Some of our preachers are modelling worship on a sequence of passages from the Book of Revelation. Many of these verses are obscure and difficult to penetrate. Jewish and Christian history has been built on a sequence of revelations. The Book of Revelation is one of those.

Meanwhile, as a nation, a world even, we are living in a time of change. As such we are a pilgrim people, moving forward, guided by the Spirit, reliant on God, dependent on our understanding of what is revealed to us now of how our Christianity can be expressed in our days and time.

We are a pilgrim people, forever moving on, 
each day a new creation, each dawn a brand new song. 
And when our hearts are rooted into one place and time, 
we lose God's moving Spirit, that singing, dancing rhyme.
	
The Hebrews came from Egypt, each turn along the way 
another revelation, another dawning day;
and through this God would teach them to always travel light, 
to trust grace for the future, to calm them or excite.
	
The shepherd of our future, calls us to something new, 
and this may twist and turn us before it can renew. 
But trust and God will take us, will help us realise
beyond imagination the hope that can arise.
	
We must not cage the Spirit, we must not quench the flame, 
we move with God together, are ready for the game. 
Each day a new creation, each dawn a brand new song,
we are a pilgrim people, forever moving on.

Andrew 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: 13 13 13 13
Tune: THORNBURY

A hymn for Trinity Sunday – ‘We cannot understand…

Sunday the 4th of June 2023 is marked as Trinity Sunday. 

I have never found the descriptions of the Trinity easy to accept – they focus on how you can have three persons in one God. My own resolution of this is less to focus on the how and simply to say that we experience something of God in and through creation, God is the ground of being, of all that exists. Jesus shows us how God would be if God was human. When our lives are an image of that of Jesus then we are living with the same Spirit. 

The thread is that of Love – in creation, in Jesus and in ourselves. And so, a hymn…

We cannot understand them,
the things we’re bid to say;
our creeds seem so confusing:
yet this is what we pray:
God’s Love was the beginning,
before all life began.
This Love became incarnate,
to last a human span.

The paradox of mystery:
the image we refine
at once divinely human,
though humanly divine.
Yet death can signal ending, 
but Love still lingers on: 
perpetual, holding Spirit
when even hope has gone.

Andrew Pratt 29/5/2023 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: 7.6.7.6
Tune: CRUGER (Hail to the Lord’s anointed)

Incendiary God – hymn for Pentecost and Wesley Day

Incendiary God, your fire of love, 
ignites our hope, within this place 
when we allow the sparks to spread
we know your presence, sense your grace.

On through the stubble of our lives, 
love burns out hatred, kindles faith, 
beyond the fire-breaks of our doubt 
you sign our path, you mark and trace.

Great conflagration fire our hearts 
until the world warmed by your breath, 
is spirit filled, infused with love 
that lasts beyond each human death.

Andrew E Pratt 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.