Humanity in harmony?
Human in harmony?
Yet we have broken peace with our anger,
best left unspoken.
God, help us share as one in humanity
Cool us, calm us centre our sanity.
One earth:
our cradle of nature and nurture.
Sharing one goal,
each neighbour, each searcher:
home of existence destroyed at our peril:
Crisis? Destruction? Goodness or evil?
God, give us the courage to love one another,
sister and mother,
father and brother;
now hold us in anguish and catch those who fall,
Ground of our being and parent of all.
© Andrew Pratt 4/10/2025 Please use freely with acknowledgment.
Use for reflection or responsorially.
Tag: harmony
We stand to sing – a hymn inspired by Luke12: 32-40
We stand to sing, the fearful lose their chains inspired by Luke 12: 32-40
1 We stand to sing, the fearful lose their chains,
the key might change, yet harmony remains,
for here is love and loving grace will blend
with grace to comfort, strengthen and to mend.
2 What once we were, now damaged and worn down,
contains the essence of a seed once sown,
a seed, that nurtured, still might rise to life
beyond this hurt and harrowed, faulted strife.
3 God values every bruised and bending reed;
God sees a nascent flower and not a weed;
and so will raise us up from where we are,
the faintest, feeble spark becomes a star.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2017 Stainer and 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: HIGHLAND CATHEDRAL
Senses sharpened in the silence – Praise in time of Covid-19
Photo ©Andrew Pratt 2020
Senses sharpened in the silence,
gently, quietly, feel your breath,
know God’s love will never leave us,
now, or in our time of death.
In this time imagine bird song,
thunder of a mountain stream,
slap of waves along the shoreline,
things for which we hope or dream.
All the beauty of the starlight,
rainbow colours in the sky,
things that we can just imagine
feed our minds until we die,
fill our hearts with heightened wonder,
strain the sinews of our thought,
soon exhausting human language,
through the images we’ve caught.
Lifted up within the mystery,
now embodied in our praise,
mystic music moves our being,
sounding notes from phrase to phrase,
raising us beyond the present,
held in loving symphony;
God inspire our hearts with singing
in one cosmic harmony.
Andrew Pratt 19/4/2020
Words © 2020 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.
Tune: CALON LAN
Christchurch – New Zealand – Hymn – O Source of many cultures
1 O Source of many cultures,
of lives, beliefs and faith;
you brought us all together
to share one world in space;
now show us how to honour
each vision of your way,
to live within the tension
of difference you display.
2 The colour and the culture,
that kept us both apart,
are gifts that we can offer,
a means for us to start
a journey with each other,
till hand in hand we show,
through mutual understanding,
respect and love can grow.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
7 6 7 6 D Iambic
Tune: AURELIA
Words © 2000 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.
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