Tag: advent hymn

As we tread this Advent pathway – new poem/hymn

Travelling through Advent, a poem or, if you wish to sing, a hymn

As we tread this advent pathway – a reflective poem

As we tread this advent pathway 
stepping through this mystery, 
wonder fills each human heartbeat, 
carves new ways through history.
Others walked this way before us, 
in a different time and space, 
spoke a language foreign, distant, 
delving deeply through God's grace.

Now within imagination 
art and science visualise 
things beyond our comprehension, 
truths we've yet to realise.
Here all language strains and fractures,   
struggles to describe, inform 
what our senses lay before us, 
fail to offer shape and form.

Yet, in faith, while frail, we fumble 
reaching through the mists of time, 
finding still, within this season,
cosmic love, incarnate rhyme.


As we tread this advent pathway – an Advent hymn

As we tread this advent pathway 
stepping through this mystery, 
wonder fills each human heartbeat, 
carves new ways through history.

Others walked this way before us, 
in a different time and space, 
spoke a language foreign, distant, 
delving deeply through God's grace.

Now within imagination 
art and science visualise 
things beyond our comprehension, 
truths we've yet to realise.

Here all language strains and fractures,   
struggles to describe, inform 
what our senses lay before us, 
fail to offer shape and form.

Yet, in faith, while frail, we fumble 
reaching through the mists of time, 
finding still, within this season,
cosmic love, incarnate rhyme.
Andrew E Pratt 30/11/2024
Words © 2024 © 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
Tunes: CHAPEL BRAE; SHIPSTON; STUTTGART

New Advent hymn – A quiet chill that freezes expectation

A quiet chill that freezes expectation, 
the hope of love seems distant and remote 
as war and hate are whirling all around us, 
we wait for light of which the prophets wrote.

There is no peace, no reconciliation 
as factions fired by hatred seethe and kill, 
when will it end, this constant devastation, 
when will we learn to listen, to be still? 
[When will we listen to each other, share one will?]

This advent season, dawn of love’s foundation 
is born in darkness of eternal night, 
and yet a flicker bids us hasten onward, 
as purple shadows hint at morning light.

And in this moment in our preparation 
let’s put aside our fripperies and fear, 
to make new space for gracious re-creation.
Come God, in love at last, come now, draw near. 
[Come God infuse your love in us, O come, draw near.]

Words Andrew Pratt © 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: 11.10.11.10
Tunes: INTERCESSOR, [LONDONDERRY AIR]

Note: Using the tune: INTERCESSOR sing as a four verse hymn. Ignore words in [square] brackets.
Using LONDONDERRY AIR combine verses 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 to make a two verse hymn using the use the words in  [square] brackets for the last line of each verse.