Tag: love

Humanity in harmony?

Humanity in harmony?

Human in harmony?
Yet we have broken peace with our anger, 
best left unspoken.

God, help us share as one in humanity
Cool us, calm us centre our sanity.

One earth: 
our cradle of nature and nurture.

Sharing one goal, 
each neighbour, each searcher: 

home of existence destroyed at our peril: 
Crisis?  Destruction? Goodness or evil?

God, give us the courage to love one another,
sister and mother, 
father and brother;
now hold us in anguish and catch those who fall, 
Ground of our being and parent of all.

© Andrew Pratt 4/10/2025 Please use freely with acknowledgment.

Use for reflection or responsorially.



A Hymn for International Day of Peace – ‘Here is Peace’

 A Hymn for International Day of Peace - Here is Peace

In 1981, the United Nations General Assembly declared the third Tuesday of September as International Day of Peace. This day coincided with the opening day of the annual sessions of the General Assembly. The purpose of the day was and still remains, to strengthen the ideals of peace around the world.
Two decades after establishing this day of observance, in 2001, the assembly moved the date to be observed annually on September 21. So, beginning in 2002, September 21 marks not only a time to discuss how to promote and maintain peace among all peoples but also a 24-hour period of global ceasefire and non-violence for groups in active combat (I am grateful to Rev’d Pat Bilsborrow for drawing my attention to this day).

Hymn: Here is Peace

Here is peace, when grace astounds us 
quelling all our wild pretence. 
Here is peace, shalom and kindness, 
passion ruled by reasoned sense.

Here is peace, when grace engenders 
love that neither fades nor ends. 
Here is peace when people welcome;
enemies become as friends.

Here is peace, when grace surprises 
ignorance with words of hope. 
Here is peace, to light our senses: 
see, God’s love has boundless scope.

Words: Andrew Pratt  written while listening to Mr D. Rutter, preacher, in Comberbach Methodist Church 2004; © 2010 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.
Tune: ADORATION (Hunt)
A tune can be found here – Traditional Latvian Melody
A commentary on the text and tune (with an out of date biography) can be found here.


Crafted from wood – a hymn on the cross – Luke 9:23

Crafted from wood - a hymn on the cross – Luke 9:23; 14:27

Crafted from wood, the grain of our decision, 
where faith was hung, a challenge to God’s love, 
the Christ had carried it to execution,
this then our choice – the wing of hawk or dove?

Some made the choice that led to their extinction, 
their’s was a loss, but not of love or grace,
accepting in each place of human crisis, 
this challenge that each Christian has to face.

Take up your cross each day was Christ’s suggestion,
if you would follow in the path he  trod, 
yet we would minimise the resurrection, 
that love transcending death can lead to God.

Words 2025 © 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: O PERFECT LOVE (Barnby)

Some thoughts on this hymn to take us further. 

I had in mind, as I wrote it: 

Luke 9:23;14:27
23 Then he said to them all, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. (New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised)

14:27Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

Also: 

Søren Kierkegaard

In Kierkegaard's view, the Church should not try to prove Christianity or even defend it. It should help the single individual to make a leap of faith, the faith that God is love and has a task for that very same single individual. Kierkegaard identified the leap of faith as the good resolution. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard)

And 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer ‘The Cost of Discipleship’ – Bonhoeffer stood against Fascism and was ultimately sent to a concentration camp and he was hanged on 9 April 1945 during the collapse of the Nazi regime.

All these point for me to Jesus’ words and how others have seen them and sought to live by them.

Look! The love that was unspoken

Look! the love that was unspoken

Look! the love that was unspoken
shines with colour, power and light,
love that never can be broken 
forging justice, putting right.
Here we live in grace and wonder owning God’s diversity.

Praising shards of light that glisten 
with the truth that sets us free, 
multitudes clasp hands of friendship,
all who claim humanity:
nothing can divert our purpose, one in our diversity.

All our art and music woven 
with divinity and grace 
has its origin, incarnate,
born within our human race,
disagreement cannot break our Spirit of diversity.

So the future opens for us:
galaxies beyond our glance, 
bound forever to each other,
held by more than cosmic chance.
Nothing now will fault our spirit: CELEBRATE DIVERSITY!!!

Words © 2025 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: 87 87 87
Tune: WESTMINSTER ABBEY; RHUDDLAN
Words commissioned to celebrate PRIDE

‘Jesus’ open love would lead him’ – a hymn inspired by a healing on the Sabbath

Jesus' open love would lead him

The unexpected healing by Jesus on a Sabbath of a crippled, and hence alienated, woman inspired these words:

1	Jesus' open love would lead him 
	into conflict with the law. 
	People then, and now, believing, 
	they know wrong, of this they're sure.
	
2	Such aggressive condemnation:
	not the way we should behave, 
	we have rules and regulations 
	plotting how our God can save.
	
3	These are rules that God has given, 
	rules that we must strive to keep, 
	yet it seems that Jesus challenged 
	norms that made the path too steep.
	
4	Rules he offered changed perceptions, 
	moved from punishment to grace, 
	showed a way of loving, living, 
	we might risk within this place.
	
5	Love beyond imagination, 
	love to heed and to enthral,
	love not bounded by rejection, 
	love that reaches out to all. 

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2013 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 Trochaic
Tune: ST CATHERINE (Jones)