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
Tag: grace
Can perfect love cast out the fear and hate – a hymn inspired by a text suggested by Gordon Taylor
Can perfect love cast out the fear and hate Words inspired by a text suggested by Gordon Taylor at a hymn workshop of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland in Lincoln July 2023. The theme is a response to the Government’s Illegal Immigration Bill. Can perfect love cast out the fear and hate that festers in a hardened, ravaged heart, when lives abandoned to a savage sea, have hope denied, grace drowned out from the start. As cold officials act with callous power we sing the words that plead and pray for care, to see humanity in each new face to wipe away the tears of rank despair. How long, O God, will we discard the lives, that you have birthed that we should seek to save, who caught by circumstance, or course of life, we destine to a swirling, watery grave. Yes perfect love can cast out fear and hate that festers in each hardened, ravaged heart, when we reach out to others in their need. Through gracious words, new hope has power to start. © Andrew Pratt 19/7/2023 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: 10.10.10.10 Tune: YANWORTH
We are a pilgrim people – a hymn
Methodists in the area in which I live are part of the way through the Methodist Bible Month. Some of our preachers are modelling worship on a sequence of passages from the Book of Revelation. Many of these verses are obscure and difficult to penetrate. Jewish and Christian history has been built on a sequence of revelations. The Book of Revelation is one of those. Meanwhile, as a nation, a world even, we are living in a time of change. As such we are a pilgrim people, moving forward, guided by the Spirit, reliant on God, dependent on our understanding of what is revealed to us now of how our Christianity can be expressed in our days and time. We are a pilgrim people, forever moving on, each day a new creation, each dawn a brand new song. And when our hearts are rooted into one place and time, we lose God's moving Spirit, that singing, dancing rhyme. The Hebrews came from Egypt, each turn along the way another revelation, another dawning day; and through this God would teach them to always travel light, to trust grace for the future, to calm them or excite. The shepherd of our future, calls us to something new, and this may twist and turn us before it can renew. But trust and God will take us, will help us realise beyond imagination the hope that can arise. We must not cage the Spirit, we must not quench the flame, we move with God together, are ready for the game. Each day a new creation, each dawn a brand new song, we are a pilgrim people, forever moving on. Andrew Pratt 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: 13 13 13 13 Tune: THORNBURY
Tangled in prejudice, lost in presumption – hymn inspired by John 9: 1-41
A hymn inspired by John 9: 1 – 41…As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned Tangled in prejudice, lost in presumption, locked in our judgments, so sure of our ground; others are sinful, but we are the righteous, this is the truth we are sure we have found. This is our blindness and now we must own it, owning suspicion of those we deride; painting them wrongly, unjustly with hatred, side-stepping honesty, trying to hide. For like the Pharisees' we are self-serving, gaining our wealth from the ones we oppress; sometimes we bring down the ones who would challenge, this we have done and now this we confess. In this confession we seek your forgiveness, God who has touched both the broken and frail. We were thought strong, but we plead for compassion, we, the successful, have found we can fail. Yet you astound us, 'your sins are forgiven', words that have echoed down into our time. How can we warrant such scandalous mercy? Only through grace can you offer this sign. 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: 11 10 11 10 Tunes: EPIPHANY HYMH; IN THE BEGINNING GOD PLAYED WITH THE PLANETS
Thoughts on Grace
Grace is uncondionally and universally extended to all. The human response to this is ‘that cannot be’. How can Grace be given to those who…? In consequence humanity, over generations, has constructed conditions to be met. or ways in which this might be enabled (Atonement theories). This is only necessary because the concept of universal unconditional Grace is beyond human understanding, it is a mystery which we, perhaps, need to face with honest agnosticism.
Grace ‘never passed by one, or it had passed by me’ (Charles Wesley).
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