Tag: love

Beatitude hymn – In places where there is no church

The Beatitudes are enigmatic – blessings for those who seem least blessed (Luke 6: 17 – 26). I’ve often thought that part of our calling as Christians is to embody and enable those blessings by our love in action. Jesus shows us how. This hymn was inspired by this theme


1	In places where there is no church, 
where hope is hard to find, 
we touch the hands made rough by life 
to seek a common mind.
We go where others would not go, 
perhaps would fear to tread, 
to go beyond our walls and ways 
wherever we are led.


2	Where commerce rules we ply our trade, 
our currency is grace, 
and all we have to offer is 
God's love to fill this place.
In prisons where we sit with those
whom justice has condemned,
we seek to mirror Jesus' love
that fear might have an end.


3	And while a person lives in pain 
a quiet voice can say, 
this time will pass, love holds you still,
we'll see another day.
In searing heat or arctic cold 
where lives are ripped and torn, 
or where a family waits in fear 
we share another dawn.


4	And is it arrogant to say 
we look with Jesus' eyes? 
We seek to see his face in all, 
to hear him in their sighs.
And so our calling is to serve, 
to go where Christ has led, 
go out, go all, go to the world, 
God's people must be fed.


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
Metre: CMD
Tune: WORKING FOR CHRIST (by Camilla Cederholm who I met in Finland – see More than hymns, No.70)

Discipleship, justice and mercy – a hymn

This last week some of us have remembered Jesus being presented in the temple. Soon our readings turn to the calling of disciples. We follow in their footsteps. As we do we are presented, not just with things we should believe, but how we live, the values we should hold.



1	God's commandments link together 
justice, mercy, love and grace; 
elements to guide the framing 
of our laws within this place.
Yet the laws and legal judgments 
that we form through human thought, 
all too easily diminish 
values that the Christ had sought.


2	As we follow in his footsteps
as disciples, let us find, 
ways to live in peace together, 
ways that bring God's grace to mind;
ways of gracious peaceful living, 
that might spread throughout the earth,
ways of God's audacious giving:
let the spirit find new birth.


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

Metre: 8 7 8 7 D
Tune: BETHANY (Smart)

At the census in the city – We welcome Christmas Day

1	At the census in the city, 
	at the crossing place of life, 
	where the homeless and abandoned 
	share the scars of human strife; 
	mid the rubble and the ruins 
	shedding God's prophetic light
	see, a star is softly shining 
	through the horror of the night.

2	In the cross of shifting shadows 
	see a mother and her child, 
	see the wetness of his features, 
	freshly born, so not yet filed. 
	In a world of cold statistics 
	yet another mouth to feed, 
	for the parents' love holds tension 
	with a calling, crying need.

3	So from Bethlehem in history 
	to this present place and time, 
	God has entered human anguish, 
	sung in tune to human rhyme; 
	yes, the baby that we welcome, 
	yes, the Christ of Palestine, 
	are as one, we seal remembrance 
	in a feast of bread and wine. 	
        [signature of love's design.]* 

4	For the ruin of the manger, 
	this prefig'ring of the cross, 
	offers Christ as our relation 
	in our chaos and our loss, 
	puts the Christ into the present, 
	places God in human hands, 
	tests our loving and our living 
	here in this and every land.

*for use when there is no communion

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2003 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 D
Tunes: BETHANY (Smart); ABBOTS LEIGH

David Hockney from – ‘Spring cannot be cancelled‘ – worth pondering…

‘This will in time be over and then what? What have we learned? I am almost 83 years old, I will die. The cause of death is birth. The only real things in life are food and love, in that order, just like our little dog Ruby, I really believe this and the source of art is love. I love life.’

Bookends, 
birth and death, 
what’s between keeps the boards apart. 
That’s what matters, 
how we fill life’s sandwich. (AP)