A hymn inspired by Matthew 16: 21 perhaps, also useful in difficult times and when faith is tested.
‘From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and
undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed,
and on the third day be raised.’
Shaken confidence dismembers
faith that once had seemed secure,
things that frighten in this moment,
at one time had seemed demure.
Love is fractured, hope is fettered,
grace obscured from sight or sound,
while we cry in desperation,
'where is safe and solid ground'.
Through the mist a form is shaping,
living sign of love and grace,
God embodied, present, human,
seen in every neighbour's face.
Hold the truth when doubt is raging,
when our lives are insecure,
fold in love each friend and neighbour,
till that love feels safe and sure.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
© 2015 Stainer and Bell Ltd.
Words: Andrew Pratt (born 1948) © 2015 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England,
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.
Metre: 8 7 8 7
Tune: STUTTGART
Tag: Hymn
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)
Up! Up and away – Ascension hymn
Up! Up and away! - Ascension hymn Up! Up and away! Was it really that crazy? Seems too much like magic, so hard to believe. His ministry ended. The cross was behind him. Disciples commissioned, so much to receive. The Spirit was coming, the mission beginning, the world was their parish to love and to hold. Disciples went on in the strength of that Spirit, a Spirit of power to inspire and enfold. But that would come later, for now they were waiting, in hiding, reflecting on all they had seen; on all Jesus taught them, in words and through wonders, in all they had heard, of whom Jesus had been. This Jesus had promised, had challenged, encouraged, had offered them peace that the world could not give. And soon all the earth would be spun on its axis, and we share that Spirit, in Christ we will live! Andrew Pratt (born 1948) Words © 2011 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. 12 11 12 11 Tune: STREETS OF LAREDO
Image extract from iPad art Andrew Pratt
Easter hymn – We cannot speculate, or glance
An empty tomb is just empty. It took a meeting with Jesus to convince a woman, then a group of men that Jesus, who had died on a cross, was alive. It is still difficult to believe. Yet after two thousand years, whatever we believe, as Geoffrey Best has written on Facebook, ‘…in this (hi)story is the revelation of the very nature of God, a God who takes all that we throw and absorbs and transforms the dead and deadly into life abundant .... if we let it!’ Amen! 1 We cannot speculate, or glance into the well of history. Nor can we look beyond this time with any sense of certainty. We only have our faith and hope, to make us stand, to help us cope. 2 Great God we grasp at straws of faith, of things we hope will point to you. We read the ancient texts and scan those distant myths to make them new. And all the time we live between these metaphors and what is seen. 3 The past is gone, we cannot hear more than an echo down the age. And what is still to come we fear; we see each other's pent up rage. Yet what we need is close at hand, your present love in every land. 4 True resurrection brings to bear the things that heal, create, unite. Love launches its triumphant praise and builds on joy and will delight. The former things are passed away, dead night transformed to brightest day. Metre: 8 8 8 8 8 8 Tune: ABINGDON Andrew E Pratt (born 1948) Words © 2015 © 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.
Art © Andrew Pratt 2022
Good Friday hymn – Tortured, beaten…
So often our Good Friday hymns soften diminish the horror - ‘glorious scars’, ‘wondrous cross’. I wrote these words as a reaction…
Tortured, beaten, scarred and tainted,
Not a picture deftly painted,
More a tattered, battered being,
Torn, disfigured, stark, unseeing.
Muscles twisted, strained, contorted,
Body dangling, bruised, distorted.
Life blood drying, sun-baked, stinging,
Hatred, bitter hatred, flinging.
Crowds insensate, tempers vented,
Full of anger, discontented.
Curses scattered, insults flying,
Spurned, derided, God is dying.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 1997 © 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.
8 8 8 8 Trochaic
CLONMACHNOISE
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