At the centre of each city
…for our nation now (alluding to Jeremiah 29: 4 – 7; Luke 17: 11-19)
1 At the centre of each city,
here where commerce drowns out tears,
hear the cry of Christ, forsaken,
people lost in debt or fears.
2 Different languages will mingle,
cultures bringing life to light,
yet the foreign raise new questions,
shaking what we thought was right.
3 Here new neighbours rubbing shoulders,
help to make us look anew
at the way we live together,
testing if our love is true
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
© 2014 Stainer and 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: GOTT WILL’S MACHEN; CROSS OF JESUS
Tag: Christ
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
God loves a scandal…a hymn for our times…
1 God loves a scandal, look at Christ,
his crying indignation
will turn our tables round again,
infect our generation.
2 And those of us who hold some power,
our influence diluted,
will sense the end of all we love,
our treasured schemes uprooted.
3 What will we do? What can we say?
Bow down in adoration?
Or rage with words, then crucify
the ground of our creation?
4 The crisis looms, the choice remains:
the cross or selfish grasping;
the denigration of the poor
or love that can be lasting?
5 God give us strength that we might take
the risk of Christ-like living,
this gracious way of selfless love,
of sacrificial giving.
Andrew Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 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: DOMINUS REGIT ME
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