These images will not be diminished by persecuting migrants, nor by making a false distinction between those seeking asylum and so called economic migrants. We need to welcome as fellow human beings people coming to our shores who are fleeing fear or poverty and to provide them with safe passage to our shores and a humanitarian reception.
1 Idyllic beaches break the waves
as bathers line the shore
This view of peace is now disturbed:
an aftermath of war.
The ones who fled from lives they knew
have gone in fear and dread,
the ships that offered hope to them
are sunk with many dead.
2 And where is God amid the swell
where tides still ebb and flow,
unfeeling of this loss of life,
as others come and go?
The commerce of the world goes on.
Can we ignore the pain?
It is as though we're blind to see
Christ crucified again.
3 The ones who drown are ones we own
as neighbours we should love;
how can we turn our eyes away,
avert our gaze above?
For when our politics conspires
to shut the door to grace
it is as though we turn away
from Jesus' tortured face.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2015 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.
CMD
Tune: KINGSFOLD
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