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
Tag: grace
Hymn for Epiphany – Like butterflies emerging in the cold
Around Christmas, in 2010, I was leading worship when a butterfly fluttered down and landed on the pulpit. It was brightly coloured and, in the cold of winter, utterly out of place…and so a hymn fitting for the 6th January, Epiphany… 1 Like butterflies emerging in the cold, incongruous strangers punctuate this birth; while snow and frosted windows paint the scene and God in human flesh has come to earth. 2 Exotic strangers, carried on the wind, the wind of wisdom, fathomed by their thought. Obscure and out of place, these coloured robes, as out of place as all the gifts they brought. 3 And yet they have a place in every play, in signalling God's universal grace, that those who fit and others who are strange, are held by God in every time and place. Andrew E Pratt (born 1948) 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 ELLERS; HIGHLAND CATHEDRAL
New Year hymn, a resolution, perhaps – Infectious faith
1 Infectious faith we demonstrate by action, when words are lived and people feel God's grace, when platitudes are kept in quiet abeyance, and love expressed through every human face. 2 This is the witness we are called to offer: the smile of welcome and the touch of care, when every neighbour frames the Christ we honour, the angel that we're greeting unaware. 3 My friend, we cannot claim to grace the Godhead when those who stand in tatters at our door are turned away without a moment's notice, while others sleep upon a stone cold floor. 4 Our faith and love are nothing, simply empty, just words we fling against a cloud filled sky, when those we see derided, disregarded, are left, without our protest, just to die. 5 Are we to be just noisy, clanging cymbals, or signs of hope upon this cold, dark earth? Ours is the calling now to re-imagine the love of God, to sign each person's worth. Andrew E Pratt (born 1948) Words © 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: 11 10 11 10 Tune: INTERCESSOR
A hymn reflecting on Christmas now…Where is Jesus…
A hymn reflecting on Christmas now…
Where is Jesus, where is Mary,
where is Joseph in this crowd,
here where commerce feeds subversion,
elevates the rich and proud.
Mother, father and a baby,
shoved by bureaucratic creeds,
soon to cross a nation’s borders,
crowds will denigrate their needs.
Lasers beaming, neon flashing,
shop fronts pleading, ‘buy me now!’
Wealth and poverty colliding,
life, as then; not different now.
Prejudice just feels expedient,
strangers just a common threat,
is a pang of conscience stinging?
Is God near in our regret?
Here amid the city’s rumble,
God incarnate can be found,
yet our sentiment, this tinsel,
numbs our feeling, muffles sound.
May the Christ be found in Christmas,
here in every act of grace,
here in foreign and familiar,
seen in every human face.
Andrew E. Pratt (born 1948)
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: 8 7 8 7 DTune: ST WINIFRED (Cradled in a manger meanly)
Hymn at a time when people feel excluded – God, save us from the platitudes
God values all – Joel 2: 28 – 29 – hymn at a time when people feel excluded. The prophet Joel said: 28 Then afterwards I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. 29 Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.
1 God, save us from the platitudes,
the empty prayers and hollow praise
that blind us to hypocrisy
of every thoughtless word or phrase.
O take us, mend us, make us one
until your work on earth is done.
2 When pride and selfishness demand
our rights when others suffer hurt,
when greed and use of wealth exploit
and push our neighbours in the dirt
yes, take us, mend us, make us one
until your work on earth is done.
3 Within a world of fear-built walls
of colour, social class or creed,
God, help us look with Christ-lit eyes
for Christ within another's need;
O, take us, mend us, make us one
until your work on earth is done.
4 O God of fundamental grace
in which your church has grown and stands,
great God of self-denying love
may hatred die in every land.
Yes, take us, mend us, make us one
until your peace on earth is won.
5 Then graceful hospitality
may welcome angels unaware,
until your all inclusive love
spans through all time, is everywhere,
for by your grace we now are one,
your hope is gained, your work is done.
Andrew E 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 8 8
Tune: ABINGDON
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