Tag: integrity

A Hymn for Lent 2 – All the pain and hurt and horror

Mark 8:31
8:31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

Hymn: All the pain and hurt and horror 

1	All the pain and hurt and horror, 
	loss, denial and mistrust, 
	hovered round as Jesus waited 
	for his friends to re-adjust.
	Lost within misunderstanding:
	thought that love was just a dream, 
	knew that it would be so easy, 
	they're confounded by Love's scheme.
	
2	Jesus taught that love would conquer 
	only through integrity, 
	that the way his life was pointing 
	tested his humanity.
	Jesus felt that Peter's challenge 
	undermined his purpose here, 
	spoke quite harshly, underlining, 
	made his need both plain and clear.
	
3	Death was now the final action,
	Jesus spelt out to his friends.
	To them this was not expedient, 
	not the way Messiah ends.
	Love would be denied if actions 
	led to violence or defence, 
	Jesus, lamb led to the slaughter, 
	death the cost of Love's expense.

Andrew Pratt 8/2/2012 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
Tune: LUX EOI
Metre: 8.7.8.7D

Great God we need your present grace – a hymn at the time of the resignation of Boris Johnson

Great God we need your present grace,
for honesty’s been shaken.
We need integrity and truth,
enliven and awaken
a seam of trust, a sense of faith,
while life is so uncertain,
the future hidden from our sight,
opaque behind a curtain.

God give a calm and steady hand,
unshackled by ambition,
to challenge hatred and distrust,
yet not employ derision.
Give us the time to act and learn,
to unify this nation,
a place where all might live as one
in spite of rank or station.

Is it too much for us to build
in gracious love and living,
a place to care, not built on greed,
but generous in giving,
where children grow in peace with hope,
as sister and as brother,
that, hand in hand, within this world
we’ll live with one another.
Metre: 8787D iambic
Tune: CONSTANCE (Sullivan)

Andrew Pratt 7/7/2022 – Responding to the resignation of Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party
Words © 2022 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.