love – Page 23 – hymnsandbooks

A Cosy Armageddon

When arguments are brewing we don’t notice,
it seems that tension builds with every word,
we say things while not hearing one another,
like children in a playground, quite absurd!

It could have been a cosy Armageddon,
the words had seemed innocuous and bland,
yet hidden in each phrase, each idle sentence
were thoughts designed to undermine each stand.

If we could simply seek a gracious outcome
when others hurt and harass, fault or harm,
a look inspired by love could turn the tables,
could echo hidden need, befriend, disarm.

Good Friday

There is no glory in this cross,
nor in a crown of thorn,
just hard derision, fearful hate
and rising human scorn.

There is no joy to see a son,
his tendons taut and strained,
he hangs, discarded garbage now,
his life blood dried, or drained.

How dare we alleluia praise,
or thank God for a gift
This heinous, human victory sees
humanity adrift.

We cannot cope with such a love,
it almost seems insane,
a counterpoint to what we seek.
We question it again.

And so we stand, if we will dare,
in shadow in this place,
and contemplate another time
Love’s dying, mortal grace.

Andrew Pratt 3/4/2019
Tune: ST FULBERT
For ‘Good Friday’.
Words © 2019 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.

Nothing can tear us from the love – hymn – Romans 8

Nothing can tear us from the love
that breathed creation into birth,
that nurtured, mothered what we are
and placed us on this fragile earth.

We walk through chaos, fraught with fear,
where death distils its dark demands,
as tragedy pulls curtains down
and care is shattered, no more stands.

In all this stuff that forms our lives,
each place where hope seemed flawed or veiled,
in spite of all, through shadowed times,
a shimmering shard of light prevailed.

And nothing now in all the world,
it seems, can rip me from the grace,
that grace that holds me still in love,
in this and every future place.

Andrew Pratt 21/3/2019

Tune: O WALY WALY

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.

Written for David Hamflett

The ancient path – a hymn for Lent

Word, wisdom, song: the grounding of creation;
a rhythmic, rhyming, rhythm from the past
that weaves a mystic saintliness of being,
compelling sense of God, un-built to last.

The ancient path will lead our footsteps forward,
the future beckons us – as yet unseen,
the lapping sea of love will yet enfold us,
for every way we go the Christ has been.

The heavens that encompass us while waiting,
the gentle touch enfolding us in death,
this warming spirit deep within our being,
is intimate as every living breath.

At every crossing woven through our seeing,
our sensing of the myriad stars of light,
give glances of a God beyond our being
still standing high in love beyond death’s night.

Yet on and on the circle is still turning,
a rhythmic, rhyming rhythm from our past:
Words, wisdom, song, the grounding of creation:
encircling love will hold, will always last.
Andrew Pratt 6/6/2015 © Stainer & Bell Ltd 2015
Tune: INTERCESSOR

Simply love in all its glory – new hymn for Christmas

Simply love in all its glory,
simply love with all its pain,
we retell the age-old story
masked in myth to take the strain:
strain of human understanding,
God with us, Immanuel named,
cosmic Christ with angels standing
round a crib: creation tamed.

Look with eyes not masked by history,
not constrained by things we’ve heard,
not obscured by fact or mystery,
so remote to seem absurd:
Jesus born a human being,
living love and hope and grace,
no more veiled, but clearly seeing,
meeting us in every face.

Andrew Pratt 10/12/2018

Tune: CALON LAN

Words © 2018 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.