Abram set out on a journey – Inspired by the call of Abram
1 Abram set out on a journey,
joined this new, uncertain, game.
Challenges bring new excitement,
no two days will be the same.
Life was settled, now it's shaken,
preconceptions turned around,
every day a new beginning,
every place uncommon ground.
2 Now it felt God moved the goal-posts,
playing by some other rules,
life and work had been uprooted,
staying home seemed just for fools.
Still today God calls the dreamers,
those with visions charged by grace,
those who move and travel onward,
bringing hope to each new place.
3 Will you join this pilgrim people,
finding new and different ways;
trusting God will walk beside you
now and in your future days?
Will you walk into the darkness,
trusting God and trav'ling light,
setting out to live the gospel,
always keeping God in sight?
Andrew Pratt (born 1948) based on Genesis 12 vs 1-4
Words © 2011 © 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.
8 7 8 7D
Tune: BETHANY
Tag: God
God and Money – Matthew 22:15-22
Challenged about the rightness of paying taxes, Jesus showed the Pharisees a coin and then
said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” When they replied correctly he
responded, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God
the things that are God’s.”
So what do we owe to the State? And what to God?
1 What is our ultimate concern?
Where is the centre of each soul?
What are the things that matter most?
What single sense will make us whole?
2 We recognize the depth of love,
the grace that held us from our birth,
but all too soon we lose our grasp
and other things have greater worth.
3 The things we own, the clothes we wear,
usurp the place that God should hold,
become our idols, cloak our minds
as if our faith was lost or sold.
4 The God that we purport to serve,
to love with heart and soul and mind,
is lost within our self concern
yet still is there to seek and find.
5 So God, we come to start again;
to clear the clutter from our lives,
to see you in each neighbour’s face,
to find the faith that holds and strives.
Andrew Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2011 © 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
Tune: MELCOMBE
In the beginning was the Word – a Hymn
The Gospel according to John says nothing about Jesus’ birth. It talks of ‘The Word’ becoming flesh. We can translate that today as ‘the energy, the source of all creation becoming human’. In shorthand God becoming human. This hymn echoes John Chapter 1. 1 The logic, the life-blood, the source of creation, the word that had spoken when all came to be; the ground of existence, of love and emotion, this God is incarnate, the light is set free. 2 This light in the darkness could not be extinguished, it shone through the cosmos, was coming to birth; the great conflagration of stars in their forming condensed to humanity, born on the earth. 3 The person of Jesus who walked in the desert, who argued and struggled, who hungered and wept, was one with that God-head, yet totally human, was growing and learning, could know or forget. 4 So here in this person our God is illumined, the word that is spoken, the love that is lived, are clues to the nature, a window beyond us to things we have doubted, to One we believed. Andrew Pratt (born 1948) based on John 1 Words © 2010 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: 12 11 12 11 Tunes: ST CATHERINES COURT; STREETS OF LAREDO
God is crying mid the carnage – a hymn at the time of Ukrainian Christmas
God is crying mid the carnage of a thousand broken bones; in the dust and fallen rubble of our long discarded homes. Where our children play out stories of the visions they have seen, God is weeping over losses, knowing just what might have been. What if love instead of horror filled the passion of our lives, could these stories be re-written where humanity survives? God still with us, God among us, sow new seeds of love through grace; help us look at one another building hope in every place. Andrew Pratt (8/1/2023) 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: 8.7.8.7 Tunes: CROSS OF JESUS (Stainer); LAUS DEO (Redhead) Written after listening to the BBC Radio 4 Sunday Service on 8/1/2023 ‘The message that Ukraine is trying to convey to the world as it celebrates its own Christmas Day’. The programme posed the question, 'Where is God' in this war? See also We hear the news in anguish - Thoughts on pacifism - God's on our side
Advent 4 – A hymn – ‘Like many children’
Advent 4 A hymn - Like many children - God with no throne (inspired by Matthew 1: 18-25)...away in a manger? Like many children, mother unmarried, born into hardship, yet not alone Jesus, was valued, Mary and Joseph, nursing the Godhead, God with no throne. Others would name him king of a kingdom, yet God incarnate lay in the straw, God in a manger? Fodder for cattle? Parents uncertain, no sign of awe? Soon they would struggle, hounded to exile, night brought no comfort, only one star; moment of wonder, quietly, no thunder, angels would whisper, heard from afar. Andrew Pratt 11/12/2022 Words © 2022 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: 5.5.5.4D Tune: BUNESSAN (Morning has broken)
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