Tag: hope

Sunlight glinting on the water – a hymn of hope

 

For all its beauty snow and ice can be dangerous, or keep us in our homes. This week’s text looks back to memories and forward to hopes, to sunlight glinting on the water

1          Sunlight glinting on the water,
            moonlight filtered by the trees,
            nature constantly reminding,
            spirit moving with the breeze,
            God is present in creation,
            God is here in such as these.

2          Holding visions in our memories,
            cherishing all we have known,
            things of beauty, scenes of wonder,
            gifts of grace we cannot own,
            all the joys that God has given,
            all the love that Christ has shown.

3          Now we come to offer worship
            for each heart and mind’s delight,
            for all human care and friendship,
            for the soaring spirit’s flight,
            God we offer praise each morning
            for your living, dancing light.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
© 2015 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: 8 7 8 7 8 7
Tune: RHUDDLAN

As we tread this Advent pathway – new poem/hymn

Travelling through Advent, a poem or, if you wish to sing, a hymn

As we tread this advent pathway – a reflective poem

As we tread this advent pathway 
stepping through this mystery, 
wonder fills each human heartbeat, 
carves new ways through history.
Others walked this way before us, 
in a different time and space, 
spoke a language foreign, distant, 
delving deeply through God's grace.

Now within imagination 
art and science visualise 
things beyond our comprehension, 
truths we've yet to realise.
Here all language strains and fractures,   
struggles to describe, inform 
what our senses lay before us, 
fail to offer shape and form.

Yet, in faith, while frail, we fumble 
reaching through the mists of time, 
finding still, within this season,
cosmic love, incarnate rhyme.


As we tread this advent pathway – an Advent hymn

As we tread this advent pathway 
stepping through this mystery, 
wonder fills each human heartbeat, 
carves new ways through history.

Others walked this way before us, 
in a different time and space, 
spoke a language foreign, distant, 
delving deeply through God's grace.

Now within imagination 
art and science visualise 
things beyond our comprehension, 
truths we've yet to realise.

Here all language strains and fractures,   
struggles to describe, inform 
what our senses lay before us, 
fail to offer shape and form.

Yet, in faith, while frail, we fumble 
reaching through the mists of time, 
finding still, within this season,
cosmic love, incarnate rhyme.
Andrew E Pratt 30/11/2024
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: 8.7.8.7
Tunes: CHAPEL BRAE; SHIPSTON; STUTTGART

‘Drones, not angels herald horror’ – a hymn for Remembrance in a new millennium through Advent to Christmas

‘Drones, not angels herald horror’ a hymn for 2024
from Remembrance through Advent to Christmas

Drones, not angels herald horror,
children shelter without hope,
singing now, but hell will follow.  	
God, through grace, give strength to cope.
Here where human hearts are broken, 
all cried out, no tears to shed, 
prayers are held, for fear, unspoken,
shrouded now in clouds of dread.

God reach deep through hateful anger 
bent on vengeance, recompense;
listen through our warring clangour, 
re-enliven common sense.
Guide us through the dust and rubble,
where our blood has stained the earth,
turning fields where all is stubble, 
seeding love that signs new birth.

Andrew E Pratt (4/11/2024)
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: 8.7.8.7
Tune: HYFRYDOL; SCARLET RIBBONS or, perhaps, BLAENWERN 

A completely new hymn for 2024 reminding us how different war is now but, nevertheless, with comparable suffering. Suitable, perhaps, for Remembrance and through Advent to Christmas given the continuing situation in the Middle East, Ukraine/Russia and many other places.

Vocation, Ordination, Being Christian after an Election

Last Sunday (30th June 2024) Methodist Presbyters and Deacons were Ordained at the Annual Methodist Conference in the UK. Those in Leeds were able to witness and share in this in person. Some of us followed the preceding service on-line. 

ALL CHRISTIANS have a vocation, a calling to follow Christ and to share God’s love whoever we are and wherever life takes us. This hymn was written FOR US!

1	We are the rainbow's colours,
	the thundering sighs of love,
	the shakers of foundations,
	the seething clouds above.
	We are God's chosen people,
	from exile we are freed,
	our common consecration
	means liberty indeed.

2	A hope for every nation,
	we come to bring God's peace,
	the reconciliation,
	the prisoner's release.
	This is our sole vocation,
	the reason for our birth,
	to offer hope through loving,
	to bring God's peace on earth.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
© 2002, 2006 Stainer & Bell Ltd (alt 2024 by the author)
Metre: 7 6 7 6 D
Tune: PASSION CHORALE

A hymn for a time of decision – Two ways or more – Written for Comberbach Methodist Church

Two ways or more to risk or rupture faith, 
this pearl, this gift, entrusted to our care, 
Which way to take, the smooth way or the rough
a challenge and a question hover there.

We wonder and we wander through our thoughts 
as all seems foreign, different from our hope. 
The ground is shaken, all seems insecure, 
where can we sow a seed that fosters hope?

Help us, good God, to see the way ahead, 
to take the risk that leads us from the night.
To plant while not yet knowing what might grow, 
surprising, thrusting, blindly into light.

Andrew Pratt 12/3/2024 For Comberbach Methodist Church at a time of decision.

© 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
Metre10.10.10.10
Tune: MORECAMBE