Reflecting on the Good Samaritan – ‘All the power that fuelled creation’
1 All the power that fuelled creation,
cosmic force that fired the stars,
still leaves people in the darkness
when we grasp for 'us' and 'ours'.
All the emptiness and sorrow
we dispel with just a glance,
eyes averted from our neighbours
giving them no second chance.
2 All we cling to, all we cherish,
stands as nothing in God’s light,
yet our attitudes deny it
holding all as if by right.
All the wealth at our disposal
could bring hope, transfigure care;
even candles lit in darkness
bring new hope when none is there.
3 All we need is love and kindness,
costly kindness to dispel
fear and poverty, while bringing
deepest love to counter hell.
All God’s love, when shared among us
shatters poverty with grace,
even now transfiguration
could be felt within this place.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
© 2016 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 D
Tunes: SCARLET RIBBONS; ABBOTS LEIGH
For another text relating to the Good Samaritan click here
Tag: empathy
In simple, suffering love – Easter Vigil
In simple, suffering love
a man looks down, on all the world
as empathetic tears drench cheeks that child-like,
once had filled with laughter.
The shadows lengthen,
heighten the beam’s intersection,
as muscles, taut with strain crack, as a whip,
and feel the course of pain.
Finished? Is it finished?
But still the thunder grumbles
and lightning slashes dark and cloud.
A drift of rain disperses yet a diminishing crowd.
© Andrew Pratt 2024
Countering extremism – living with difference (previously on Facebook)
When you relate so closely to another that you feel their pain, and that pain can only be assuaged when your pain has gone, this is true compassion. That is why Jesus touched the leper, why the Samaritan crossed over. To be human, to love, we do not need to believe in God or to assent to a moral code. We ‘simply’ need to recognise and embody our common humanity with all others. This is the essence of love manifested in the idea of incarnation and can never be imposed on others and is not a condition for us to be loved.
Holocaust Memorial Day – When words are spent – a new hymn
When words are spent and grief destroys compassion,
or fear of war throws shadows like a cross,
God melt our hearts and fire imagination,
that we might sense the pain within each loss.
This loss can blind our eyes and freeze our feeling,
can numb for us the pain of holocaust,
for memory fades, to leave just words revealing
a horror far beyond all human cost.
God open in our present generation,
a depth of human empathy to feel
humanity that bridges every nation,
that only love and hope and grace can seal.
Andrew Pratt 10/1/2023
Words © 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
Tune: INTERCESSOR
https://www.methodist.org.uk/our-faith/worship/singing-the-faith-plus/posts/holocaust-memorial-day-2023/
Auschwitz – Birkenau – the end of the line
For a continuing time of COVID – HYMN/PRAYER – When the weeping of the nations
When the weeping of the nations fills our hearts with holy dread, when a virus rings with pity those who cannot reach their dead, God is in our consternation, weeping by each sufferer’s bed. Distanced, lacking human comfort, no more in a mother’s arms, fearful faces peer through visors watching, even breathing harms, knowing only humane kindness brings the peace that heals, disarms. God bring strength in human weakness, give us grace that we might see through the mists of mortal blindness how to live through agony, how through quiet compassion, silence, we might mark our empathy. Andrew Pratt 31/12/2020 Words © 2021 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England. http://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. Tune: PICARDY Metre: 87 87 87
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