Advent in uncertain times - Active love, not fearful frenzy
1 Active love, not fearful frenzy,
Is the path that we pursue,
Counterblast to alienation,
Struggle making all things new.
Facing up to common conflict,
Meeting arrogance with prayer,
Seeking to be one with Jesus,
Dignified amid despair.
2 Torture, fear and desecration
Paint the canvas of our lives;
But the picture, deeply woven,
Demonstrates that love survives.
Systems that would seek to scar us,
Mould us blindly to their trends,
We will overthrow with kindness,
Not be subject to their ends.
3 We will take the cross of Jesus
Into every sphere of life,
We will stand for peace and justice,
We will not succumb to strife.
We must meet this tribulation,
Live our lives, if need be, die;
Take no refuge in abstraction,
Take the cross and lift it high!
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
© 1997 Stainer & Bell Ltd
Words Andrew Pratt © 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: 8 7 8 7 D Trochaic
Tune: BETHANY (Smart)
Tag: fear
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
As an election approaches a hymn (poem,song) – If love is foremost in our faith
If love is foremost in our faith
we have a choice to make
on this and every other day,
for all else is at stake;
we see a world that’s broken down,
where poverty and fear
are trampelling the weakest ones,
with hatred lurking near.
‘Today’, God said, I give a choice
where life and death compete.
The chance is now for us to take,
to finish, to complete,
the turning of the tables here
as Christ, one time, had turned
the temple tables, scattering greed,
to free those power had spurned.
Where selfishness can cripple lives,
or love can set them free,
what happens from this moment on
rests now with you and me:
if our audacious words of grace
can frame what we would pray,
then from this moment, in our time,
let love infuse each day.
Andrew Pratt 22/5/2024 on the announcement of a General Election
Words © 2024 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: CMD
Tunes: ELLACOMBE; COE FEN; KINGSFOLD
When song gives way to solitude – hymn inspired by Psalm 130
This coming Sunday is Passion Sunday. The following words were inspired by one of the Psalms, 130, appointed for this Sunday. 1 When song gives way to solitude, and loneliness conspires with fear; when walls of anguish tower around, and agony is sharp and shear; deep in the midst of our concern love can, love must, love will draw near. 2 When all is dark and comfortless and no one near can hear our sighs, when tears are salt with bitterness and all we know are jeers and lies; here in the midst of our despair love shares our pain and with us cries. 3 When all is seared with grief and loss and faith seems empty, or absurd, when life lacks purpose, shape or form, we find no sense, we frame no word; here in the furnace of our fear love whispers peace and will be heard. Andrew E Pratt (born 1948) Words © 2002 © 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 8 8 8 8 8 Tune: ABINGDON
Idyllic beaches break the waves – a hymn relating to migration and asylum – sadly still pertinent..
These images will not be diminished by persecuting migrants, nor by making a false distinction between those seeking asylum and so called economic migrants. We need to welcome as fellow human beings people coming to our shores who are fleeing fear or poverty and to provide them with safe passage to our shores and a humanitarian reception. 1 Idyllic beaches break the waves as bathers line the shore This view of peace is now disturbed: an aftermath of war. The ones who fled from lives they knew have gone in fear and dread, the ships that offered hope to them are sunk with many dead. 2 And where is God amid the swell where tides still ebb and flow, unfeeling of this loss of life, as others come and go? The commerce of the world goes on. Can we ignore the pain? It is as though we're blind to see Christ crucified again. 3 The ones who drown are ones we own as neighbours we should love; how can we turn our eyes away, avert our gaze above? For when our politics conspires to shut the door to grace it is as though we turn away from Jesus' tortured face. Andrew E Pratt (born 1948) Words © 2015 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. CMD Tune: KINGSFOLD
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