Tag: migration

A hymn reflecting on Christmas now…Where is Jesus…

A hymn reflecting on Christmas now…

Where is Jesus, where is Mary,
where is Joseph in this crowd,
here where commerce feeds subversion,
elevates the rich and proud.
Mother, father and a baby,
shoved by bureaucratic creeds,
soon to cross a nation’s borders,
crowds will denigrate their needs.
           
Lasers beaming, neon flashing,
shop fronts pleading, ‘buy me now!’
Wealth and poverty colliding,
life, as then; not different now.
Prejudice just feels expedient,
strangers just a common threat,
is a pang of conscience stinging?
Is God near in our regret?
           
Here amid the city’s rumble,
God incarnate can be found,
yet our sentiment, this tinsel,
numbs our feeling, muffles sound.
May the Christ be found in Christmas,
here in every act of grace,
here in foreign and familiar,
seen in every human face.
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 DTune: ST WINIFRED (Cradled in a manger meanly)

Idyllic beaches break the waves – a hymn relating to migration and asylum – sadly still pertinent..

These images will not be diminished by persecuting migrants, nor by making a false distinction between those seeking asylum and so called economic migrants. We need to welcome as fellow human beings people coming to our shores who are fleeing fear or poverty and to provide them with safe passage to our shores and a humanitarian reception.

1	Idyllic beaches break the waves 
	as bathers line the shore
	This view of peace is now disturbed:
	an aftermath of war.
	The ones who fled from lives they knew 
	have gone in fear and dread, 
	the ships that offered hope to them 
	are sunk with many dead.
 
2	And where is God amid the swell 
	where tides still ebb and flow,
	unfeeling of this loss of life,
	as others come and go?
	The commerce of the world goes on. 
	Can we ignore the pain?
	It is as though we're blind to see 
	Christ crucified again.
 
3	The ones who drown are ones we own 
	as neighbours we should love;
	how can we turn our eyes away, 
	avert our gaze above?
	For when our politics conspires 
	to shut the door to grace 
	it is as though we turn away 
	from Jesus' tortured face.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2015 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.

CMD
Tune: KINGSFOLD

While the nations guard their borders,

While the nations guard their borders, 
cherished cultures, ways of life,
people struggle for survival,
children die while fleeing strife. 
Can we hear with calm acceptance 
what the news has got to tell?
Can we claim to follow Jesus 
while the world drifts into hell?


Hell is where there’s no more loving, 
close at hand, not out of sight, 
what we make denying others 
grace of love, or hope of light.
When compassion’s drained and stranded, 
voices might as well be dumb
human cries that we’ve avoided 
fall on ears both blocked and numb.


Christ is calling in each murmur, 
in each whisper framing need, 
silence louder than God’s thunder, 
loud enough to quell our greed;
yet we close our ears, our senses, 
dreading every troubling fact,
lest we feel the pain of others 
forcing us to rise and act.

©Andrew Pratt
26/11/2021



Our borders, our walls mock the faith that we own -Hymn/Poem

Our borders, our walls mock the faith that we own,
denying the Christ that we claim to enthrone,
for Christ is our neigbour to love or reject,
for us to disdain, or to treat with respect.

The justice of God is as real as our flesh,
as real as each life that we drown or refresh;
as active as righteousness seen in the cross,
where love met with hatred while bearing the loss.

And now, in this moment, we need to decide,
our crisis of conscience to love or deride:
to claim that some small print lets us off the hook,
or answer, with courage, Christ’s challenging look?

Andrew Pratt 14/7/2019
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.
Tune: ST DEINIO