Tag: fear

Filled with fear may love surround us

Filled with fear may love surround us

 

Filled with fear may love surround us,

spirit ground us, in that love,

drench us with this expectation

here on, earth not just above.

 

May each day extend a welcome,

open hands and open hearts,

open homes that offer shelter,

love that never more departs.

 

God enfold us, always hold us,

may our human love extend

’til all people, every nation

know your love can never end.

 

Words: Andrew Pratt (born 1948) © 18 August 2026 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.

Metre: 8.7.8.7 Tune: ALL FOR JESUS

Hurricane Melissa – hymn-iPad art

Fraught with danger, dark foreboding,

fear is lurking in the wings, 

swirling thund’rous winds uplifting, 

cosmic forces, shattered things. 

Buildings lifted, structures sundered,

lives are broken, swept aside, 

God where is your promised presence

when there is no place to hide?

Take us, hold us, mother, fold us

in the harbour of your love, 

guide us through this present moment, 

quell this torment peaceful dove.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
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

Tune: ALL FOR JESUS

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)

Reflecting on the Good Samaritan – hymn – ‘All the power that fuelled creation’

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