Tag: crisis

Humanity in harmony?

Humanity in harmony?

Human in harmony?
Yet we have broken peace with our anger, 
best left unspoken.

God, help us share as one in humanity
Cool us, calm us centre our sanity.

One earth: 
our cradle of nature and nurture.

Sharing one goal, 
each neighbour, each searcher: 

home of existence destroyed at our peril: 
Crisis?  Destruction? Goodness or evil?

God, give us the courage to love one another,
sister and mother, 
father and brother;
now hold us in anguish and catch those who fall, 
Ground of our being and parent of all.

© Andrew Pratt 4/10/2025 Please use freely with acknowledgment.

Use for reflection or responsorially.



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.

Andrew Donaldson from Toronto, has agreed to my sharing his hymn ‘How Can We Sing, Our Souls Aghast and Shaken?’ – appropriate at this time…

Thank you to Andrew Donaldson from Toronto, a Fellow of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, who has agreed to my sharing his hymn 'How Can We Sing, Our Souls Aghast and Shaken?' here. It is particularly appropriate at this time, I feel.

1. How can we sing? – our souls aghast and shaken?		
Sing, when our hope has broken like a bone?			
Long-whispered schemes now rise up, proud and open.			 
Tyrants and kings, tyrants and kings		
Now rule us from a throne.		
 
2. How can we sing? What good will come with praises?
Songs fill the air; they soar, then soon are gone.					
Hordes overturn our safe and sacred places,			
Leave not a trace, leave not a trace,
Nor stone upon a stone.		

3. How can we sing? – for who will hear our voices?		
Why does a lie sound wiser than a psalm?	
Shrewd powers lead from crisis into crisis;		
None care to hear, none care to hear
Your shepherd’s voice of calm.							

4. How can we sing, yet how can we stand silent?
Long-silent tongues have sung us to this day:
Saints voiced a hope both holy and defiant.	
Breathe through our song, breathe through our song,
O Holy One, we pray.

Words: Andrew Donaldson
© 2025 GIA Publications, Inc. # U01906T
Please include any reproduction for local church use on your Copyright Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to GIA Publications, Inc.

Andrew suggests the following tune COMMENT VOULOIR QU’UNE PERSONNE CHANTE
French Troubadour melody
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifxGjuldIko
Andrew also notes that the words fit to GENEVAN 12, but only if you don't repeat the phrase in the fourth line of text.

John the Baptist – a hymn

Related to Luke 3:7-18 – John the Baptist – The Third Sunday in Advent

1	This is the Baptist, unkempt and yet ready, 	
	calling the people to listen and act; 
	calling them down to the water for washing,
	talking of holiness, Godliness, fact.
	
2	This is the man who will call to repentance
	fisherman, Pharisee, zealot and priest; 
	here in the river the sinners will gather, 
	taking God's blessing and sharing God's peace.
		
3	This is the prophet announcing the crisis, 
	moment for turning for challenge and choice;
	quenching of hatred, demanding repentance, 
	giving a reason to praise and rejoice.
	
4	This is the man, in humility pointing 
	others to one who would soon take his place.
	Jesus is coming, the Spirit confirming, 
	this is my Son who will channel my grace.
	
5	Up from the waters the Christ is arising,
	up from our slumbering we will rise too;
	waking to love and to work every dawning, 
	each a disciple with Christ's work to do.

Andrew Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2009 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: STEWARDSHIP