God we need your holy wisdom – a hymn written nearly 20 years ago…still pertinent, I fear.
1 God we need your holy wisdom,
need to know your presence here,
through audacious, fearless living,
and your dying, draw us near.
2 We are failing, needing loving,
so addicted to despair,
come with healing, mend the broken,
with your grace renew, repair.
3 Feed our rich imagination,
let the poets speak again
words of hope, profound redemption,
foil this sharp, systemic pain.
4 Then unleash our lives to follow
Christ our leader, yet our friend,
and through risks of selfless living,
find through love your goal, our end.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2007Stainer & 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: CHAPEL BRAE; ALL FOR JESUS
Tag: death
Such blasphemous extravagance – a hymn inspired by the raising of Lazarus but pertinent at this time
John 11:1-45 – The raising of Lazarus - Jesus’ assertions that his actions would demonstrate who he was were, to those around him, blasphemous in the extreme…and all this in the context that he was moving nearer to Jerusalem where he would be crucified.
This lyrical poem seems pertinent in the world at this time…
1 Such blasphemous extravagance
as limb is torn from limb;
expense is unaccountable,
is this the final sin?
2 There is no god, yet pain is god,
and God is very real,
amid the carnage and the fear,
the hatred that we feel
3 And did God look through human eyes
and touch with human hands,
and did a human mind discern
love's seed sown in these lands?
4 Yes, Christ is God, incarnate God,
and still his flesh is torn;
and eyes that look on all the world
with tears and cares are worn.
5 And still God hangs with wondering eyes
and all the world seems lost,
and no one dares to face the facts,
while parents count the cost.
6 When will we learn, O can we learn,
the lesson that Christ taught:
that wood and nails can never end
the love for which he fought.
Andrew Pratt (born 1948)
© 2010 Stainer and Bell Ltd., London, England, www.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 6 8 6
Tune: BRISTOL Ravenscroft – ‘Hark the glad sound’
Created by HymnQuest.com
The sound of history humming – ‘a thief within the night’?
The sound of history humming – but what next, ‘a thief within the night’?
Matthew 24: 43
1 The sound of history humming,
as light and matter form,
as galaxies are clustered
within a cosmic storm;
philosophers imagine
while science gathers facts,
we reach for understanding,
yet what we know contracts.
2 We delved beyond the present
through interstellar gas;
we fathom, seek to measure,
a sub-atomic mass.
The God that we conceive of,
a thief within the night,
we cannot gauge this treasure
beyond the scale of light.
3 As yet the mystery blinds us,
confined by birth and death,
but human exploration
will not discard the quest;
as yet we live in tension:
the only earth we know
is where all skill and science
must help our love to grow.
Andrew E. Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2006 © 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 D
Tune: AURELIA; VICTORY PARADE (Ian Sharp)
Good God what are we doing? – a hymn in a time of war and remembrance of Hiroshima
Good God what are we doing? – a hymn in a time of war and remembrance of Hiroshima
Good God what are we doing
upon this harrowed earth,
with children starved, or banished,
a hell has to come to birth?
And even now the mid-wives
see nurtured babies die,
while politicians hunker
and hide behind a lie.
If God is good the image
that we uphold and bear
is marred beyond cognition,
humanity lacks care.
A spark of holy presence
becomes a fading shard
while hopeful grace is damaged,
love’s clarity is barred.
Good God forgive indifference
that lets our children die,
raise up again a spirit
of grace beyond a sigh,
until we cradle babies
and nurture them with love,
until war’s hawks are banished,
peace settling like dove.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2026 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 D
Tune: PASSION CHORALE
The sky, at sunset, still bleeding…
When the sky at sunset, bleeding, mirrors pain that fells our hope;
it seems that love is fast receding, sowing tears that can’t be quelled.
Can it be that God, seceding, leaves this world, all grace expelled?
When the streets are warm with terror, as emotions run or seize,
singing notes of music shudder, when God’s tempo should relieve,
must we lose the spirit’s rudder, losing hope?
We start to grieve.
When the darkness is descending, night a quiet, yet chilling, shroud,
folding round us bleak, unending, muting what we cry aloud,
is God near, with grace transcending fear and dread, defeat or cloud?
© Andrew Pratt 27/7/2016/2020/2024
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