worship – Page 5 – hymnsandbooks

Star strewn garments clothe the heavens – hymn, for harvest or creation season

Hymn inspired by the 1 Timothy. Suitable, perhaps, for harvest or creation season worship or reflection.

A song of creation inspired by 1 Timothy

Star strewn garments clothe the heavens,
robes of beauty, source of awe;
Spirit God transcending hist’ry,
way beyond where pulsars soar.

Mountains rise up from the valleys,
folded like a gathered cloak
seas and rivers, great sierra,
lofty cedar, ageing oak.

God beyond our understanding,
God of wisdom, Lord of days;
God of miracle and wonder,
You deserve our life-long praise!

Metre: 8 7 8 7
Tune: STUTTGART

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2017 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.

A Hymn for International Day of Peace – ‘Here is Peace’

A Hymn for International Day of Peace - Here is Peace

In 1981, the United Nations General Assembly declared the third Tuesday of September as International Day of Peace. This day coincided with the opening day of the annual sessions of the General Assembly. The purpose of the day was and still remains, to strengthen the ideals of peace around the world.
Two decades after establishing this day of observance, in 2001, the assembly moved the date to be observed annually on September 21. So, beginning in 2002, September 21 marks not only a time to discuss how to promote and maintain peace among all peoples but also a 24-hour period of global ceasefire and non-violence for groups in active combat (I am grateful to Rev’d Pat Bilsborrow for drawing my attention to this day).

Hymn: Here is Peace

Here is peace, when grace astounds us
quelling all our wild pretence.
Here is peace, shalom and kindness,
passion ruled by reasoned sense.

Here is peace, when grace engenders
love that neither fades nor ends.
Here is peace when people welcome;
enemies become as friends.

Here is peace, when grace surprises
ignorance with words of hope.
Here is peace, to light our senses:
see, God’s love has boundless scope.

Words: Andrew Pratt written while listening to Mr D. Rutter, preacher, in Comberbach Methodist Church 2004; © 2010 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.
Tune: ADORATION (Hunt)
A tune can be found here – Traditional Latvian Melody
A commentary on the text and tune (with an out of date biography) can be found here.

If God in love invests us with a voice – a Christian response to war?

At at a time of continued war in Israel/Palestine and Ukraine/Russia as people seek, or fear, to protest what might our Christian response be?

If God in love invests us with a voice, 
and given hell on earth, a human choice,
we cannot cry our tears into this night 
if we are silent with our people’s plight.

Don’t  say that they are foreign, not our own,
these faces greeting rocket, tank or drone, 
for as these people flee towards our shore 
they seek for care and safety, nothing more.

Humanity, the common life we share,
is all that’s left that we can hold and bear, 
so as we look into each human face, 
see Christ and through God’s Spirit offer grace.

Andrew Pratt 7/9/2025
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: 10.10.10.10
Tune: EVENTIDE; ST AGNES (Langran)

Crafted from wood – a hymn on the cross – Luke 9:23

Crafted from wood - a hymn on the cross – Luke 9:23; 14:27

Crafted from wood, the grain of our decision,
where faith was hung, a challenge to God’s love,
the Christ had carried it to execution,
this then our choice – the wing of hawk or dove?

Some made the choice that led to their extinction,
their’s was a loss, but not of love or grace,
accepting in each place of human crisis,
this challenge that each Christian has to face.

Take up your cross each day was Christ’s suggestion,
if you would follow in the path he trod,
yet we would minimise the resurrection,
that love transcending death can lead to God.

Words 2025 © 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: 11.10.11.10
Tune: O PERFECT LOVE (Barnby)

Some thoughts on this hymn to take us further.

I had in mind, as I wrote it:

Luke 9:23;14:27
23 Then he said to them all, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. (New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised)

14:27Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

Also:

Søren Kierkegaard

In Kierkegaard's view, the Church should not try to prove Christianity or even defend it. It should help the single individual to make a leap of faith, the faith that God is love and has a task for that very same single individual. Kierkegaard identified the leap of faith as the good resolution. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard)

And

Dietrich Bonhoeffer ‘The Cost of Discipleship’ – Bonhoeffer stood against Fascism and was ultimately sent to a concentration camp and he was hanged on 9 April 1945 during the collapse of the Nazi regime.

All these point for me to Jesus’ words and how others have seen them and sought to live by them.

As summer ends a hymn to challenge us – The Christ was a vagabond

As we begin (for Methodists, a new Methodist year this hymn challenges us, not to look at others, but to be honest about our own faithfulness to the example of Jesus.

The Christ was a vagabond, penniless stranger, 
or so some would style him, deriding his call. 
And those who would follow, were they any nearer 
the total self-giving, of giving their all? 

And we at this moment, are we any better? 
Our silver excuses, have we got it right? 
The poor are still with us? Then love of our neighbour 
is vacuous, meaningless, blinding our sight. 

The wealth of this nation is at our disposal, 
yet few hold the purse strings, have power to decide, 
while others are crippled. Iniquitous ‘sharing’ 
will leave them impoverished, nowhere to hide. 

With wages and taxes we barter for people, 
define what is poverty, pity the poor, 
but then, when the homeless and helpless come knocking, 
we bar them from pavements while locking the door. 

We bathe in hypocrisy, claim to be righteous, 
great God will you open our eyes to the plight 
of those we have damaged, derided, diminished: 
the Christ in the other, still hid from our sight. 

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
© 2017 Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Words © 2017 © 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