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Look beyond your life’s horizon – A hymn for Pentecost

Look beyond your life’s horizon – A hymn for Pentecost which echoes Joel 2: 28 & Acts 2: 1-21

Look beyond your life’s horizon,
what will come of life on earth?
God forsaken? Horror stricken?
Or a hope of love’s rebirth?
Look into this unknown future,
ask what actions can we take,
so that peace becomes an option
in decisions that we make.

Placing God right at the centre,
seeing Christ in those we meet,
moving with a gracious Spirit,
could make hopes and dreams complete;
dreams passed down through generations,
where in spite of faith or creed,
people reach to one another,
seek to meet another’s need.

Could it be within our lifetime
that the riches of this earth
might be shared, yes shared out freely,
not by lottery of birth?
Could we learn to be less selfish,
letting go, not grasping wealth,
till the world and all it’s peoples
live in harmony and health?

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2017 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 Tune: HYFRYDOL

Created by HymnQuest.com

Jesus casts out an unclean spirit from a man in a synagogue – Mark 1: 21 -28 – a new hymn


A man convulsed and crying 

was turning to and fro’, 

but Jesus reached to meet him 

to bid the spirit go.

The language of this story 

sounds foreign, to our speech

yet still our health can test us, 

when faith seems out of reach.



Great God, in Christ you show us 

that love can cast out fear, 

the fear that can assail us,

or those that we hold dear.

In times of desolation, 

or  times of deep  distress. 

mid loneliness bring friendship 

bring love to lift and bless.



If hearts and thoughts are twisted,

when nothing is secure

may ones like Christ stay near us, 

to show that love is sure,

to hold us through disturbance, 

as we will hold them too

when shadows cloud your presence

we’ll see each other through.



Andrew Pratt 20/1/2024

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: 7.6.7.6.D

Tune: CRUGER; PENLAN

This is the time of crisis

Things we know are never wholly certain,
we fathom and explore,
we test the tangled evidence
while seeking to decide.

This is the time of crisis,
of decision,
a time for making choices.

Life sometimes stutters,
moving on in stages.
At others it seems seldom interrupted.
Day to day passes without incident.

Then the cancer, infarction,
crippling us with indecision.

Death is inevitable since our birth.
But should we, as the poet wrote,
‘strive against the dying of the light’?
Or, windhover like, roll, riding on the steady air,
swing in mastery of this fluid existence?

Broken pinioned we may plummet,
God forbid.

But is it worth the struggle?
To claw heavenward,
perhaps survive,
at what present cost?

And all that now determines action will sound ephemeral,
of little consequence.

Such impulses drive the decisions we will make,
for life or death,
in love or grace.