Tag: humanity

A hymn for Trinity Sunday – ‘We cannot understand…

Sunday the 4th of June 2023 is marked as Trinity Sunday. 

I have never found the descriptions of the Trinity easy to accept – they focus on how you can have three persons in one God. My own resolution of this is less to focus on the how and simply to say that we experience something of God in and through creation, God is the ground of being, of all that exists. Jesus shows us how God would be if God was human. When our lives are an image of that of Jesus then we are living with the same Spirit. 

The thread is that of Love – in creation, in Jesus and in ourselves. And so, a hymn…

We cannot understand them,
the things we’re bid to say;
our creeds seem so confusing:
yet this is what we pray:
God’s Love was the beginning,
before all life began.
This Love became incarnate,
to last a human span.

The paradox of mystery:
the image we refine
at once divinely human,
though humanly divine.
Yet death can signal ending, 
but Love still lingers on: 
perpetual, holding Spirit
when even hope has gone.

Andrew Pratt 29/5/2023 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: 7.6.7.6
Tune: CRUGER (Hail to the Lord’s anointed)

When language demeans… poem

When language just demeans ones we should love 
we know that we we have lost our common sense, 
we leave the lost diminished without care,
and hatred permeates the present tense.


And in this moment evil can be felt, 
while silence is an option to avoid, 
a voiceless church denies the life of Christ, 
as neighbours face an unremitting void.

© Andrew Pratt 12/3/2023

If God is love, then God in love unites us – Christian Unity

If God is love, then God in love unites us 

If God is love, then God in love unites us, 
the essence of our being, sense and life, 
how can we be divided, for our nature
is rooted in this Spirit, transcends strife.
The ethic by which all our life is driven 
is grounded in relationship and prayer, 
for where love joins us, weaving bonds of friendship, 
be sure to find that God, through grace, is dwelling there.

If this is so, then what can separate us:
our human ego, hubris or our pride? 
For when we argue, struggle with each other,
like children we are fighting for our side.
Without God holding us we’re hollow cymbals, 
we need to let Love guide our ebb and flow, 
till entering the stream of love together, 
the harmony of hope through trust will surely show.

Andrew Pratt 15/1/2023 written for Northwich & District Churches Together, with thanks to Robert Bridge for inspiration.
Words © 2023 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: LONDONDERRY AIR

Holocaust Memorial Day – When words are spent – a new hymn

When words are spent and grief destroys compassion, 
or fear of war throws shadows like a cross, 
God melt our hearts and fire imagination, 
that we might sense the pain within each loss.
 
This loss can blind our eyes and freeze our feeling, 
can numb for us the pain of holocaust, 
for memory fades, to leave just words revealing
a horror far beyond all human cost.
 
God open in our present generation, 
a depth of human empathy to feel 
humanity that bridges every nation, 
that only love and hope and grace can seal.

Andrew Pratt 10/1/2023
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: 11.10.11.10
Tune: INTERCESSOR
https://www.methodist.org.uk/our-faith/worship/singing-the-faith-plus/posts/holocaust-memorial-day-2023/

Auschwitz – Birkenau – the end of the line