Tag: death

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

From Words, images and Imagination copyright Andrew Pratt 2020

Hymn on the death of John the Baptist

The death of John the Baptist


1 Evil intention, skilful deception,
devious plotting, bent on revenge;
heart fired by hatred, John is not sacred,
see how Herodias seeks her revenge.


2 Then came the moment, see her opponent,
vulnerable prisoner, she’d seal his fate.
Dancing for Herod opened the scabbard,
offered the victim cold on a plate.


3 Shocking entrapment, scheming detachment,
almost inhuman, are we like that?
When self-deception hides our intention
self-righteous pleading bleeds on the mat.


4 Let us be honest, grace is God’s promise,
no need to earn it, this gift is free.
Yet could I face it? How to live with it:
face in the mirror looking at me.


Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
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 9 10 9
Tune: BUNESSAN

A Hymn for Lent 2 – All the pain and hurt and horror

Mark 8:31
8:31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

Hymn: All the pain and hurt and horror 

1	All the pain and hurt and horror, 
	loss, denial and mistrust, 
	hovered round as Jesus waited 
	for his friends to re-adjust.
	Lost within misunderstanding:
	thought that love was just a dream, 
	knew that it would be so easy, 
	they're confounded by Love's scheme.
	
2	Jesus taught that love would conquer 
	only through integrity, 
	that the way his life was pointing 
	tested his humanity.
	Jesus felt that Peter's challenge 
	undermined his purpose here, 
	spoke quite harshly, underlining, 
	made his need both plain and clear.
	
3	Death was now the final action,
	Jesus spelt out to his friends.
	To them this was not expedient, 
	not the way Messiah ends.
	Love would be denied if actions 
	led to violence or defence, 
	Jesus, lamb led to the slaughter, 
	death the cost of Love's expense.

Andrew Pratt 8/2/2012 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
Tune: LUX EOI
Metre: 8.7.8.7D

Body Bag, Body Bags

22 years old, dead in a bag.

‘Just down there’ casual words from a ‘reception’ desk.

Cold.

But, then, a mortuary is a chilling place.

‘Chill out’, we say.

Then rows of babies follow where my son has gone.

He departed by train at night.

Limp hands, recognisable like my own.

Cold, lifeless.

An accident.

None to blame.

But these babies, gone before time?

No excuse.

Death by choice, of the vulnerable and truly innocent.

Few are truly innocent.

Time compounds circumstance and reason

to churn us into who we are.

Some curdle, I suppose.

But death at birth has no rhyme or reason.

Don’t multiply your guilt by pointing fingers.

Don’t seek to assuage hell

by washing your hands of your complicity.

Wringing your hands won’t dry the blood of your hypocrisy.

But remember also, neither will it erase the all encompassing love

of the God you claim to worship,

yet who through obscene action you blaspheme at every turn.

Copyright Andrew Pratt 19/11/2023

Great God, your love has held our lives – Remembrance Hymn

1	Great God, your love has held our lives
	through all the years down to this day.
	Your constant presence held us fast:
	remain with us we plead and pray.
	We've seen the ruins left by war,
	the tumbled buildings, street by street;
	some heard the voices that they loved
	and cried for those they'd no more meet.
	
2	As time moves on some memories fade,
	some griefs we shared lie in the past;
	for others pain is just as sharp,
	we know their hurt will always last.
	Some human acts have swept away
	our partners, parents, children, friends,
	some people we had never known;
	the memory lives and never ends.
	
3	Beyond this day we try to live:
	a sinew of each life survives,
	but where is God in hurt and hate?
	The questions stay to haunt our lives.
	Help us to build a better world
	not fuelled by vengeance, fed by greed;
	a world in which we all can live,
	what ever colour, race or creed.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
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: LMD
Tune: JERUSALEM

Other resources: Worshipcloud