Marbury Park Northwich 16/12/2021
Tag: mystery
Easter Day
Easter Rainbow Cross Suffocating night smothering, obliterating the broken bloody body hammered hard, staining scarlet that cross of rough-cut wood and thunder crashed the doom of death. Then darkness fractured, light splintered, fragments of colour shot out into the brilliance of a multi-coloured Easter morning in a green garden. And an empty cross rainbow-wrapped, images the promise of the death-defying dawn of new hope. Marjorie Dobson © 2019 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. From Unravelling the Mysteries, Stainer & Bell Ltd., 2019.

Quite early one morning © Andrew Pratt
A strange new day This is the day when perfume remained unopened, spices were no longer needed, cloths and sponges were unused. This is the day when stone was no barrier, soldiers abandoned guard duty, grave clothes and tomb were empty. This is the day when the unexpected became reality, a man asked awkward questions, uttered unlikely proclamations. This is the day when bewilderment ruled, fear was ever-present, obedience the only option. This is the day when women left hurriedly, uncertain and warily, to tell a strange story to an unbelieving audience, For they did not know it, but this is the day when everything changed: death was defeated, new life was beginning, hope overwhelming despair. This is the day of resurrection. Marjorie Dobson © 2019 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. From Unravelling the Mysteries, Stainer & Bell Ltd., 2019. Come in the morning Come in the morning. Come see the dawning. Come to the garden – life has broken through. Jesus, dead and buried. To his grave they hurried. Anxious women found that life had broken through. Chorus Soldiers could not keep him for they were found sleepiing and the tomb was open – life had broken through. Chorus Peter, unbelieving, left, still full of grieving. Nothing would convince him life had broken through. Chorus Mary, greatly shaken, thought he had been taken. Heard his voice that told her life had broken through. Chorus Where there was despairing, grief and horror sharing, now there is a rumour life has broken through. Chorus So God’s word is spoken, when our hearts are broken there will come a time when new life will break through. Chorus Marjorie Dobson © 2019 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. From Unravelling the Mysteries, Stainer & Bell Ltd., 2019. Metre: 6 6 6 5 and chorus 5 5 5 5 Tune: Dance to thi’ Daddy (When the boat comes in) Mary Magdalene My name is Mary, common enough in my time to need to be identified by place, or family. Mine is such a name. They call me the Magdalene. People call me other names. Some claim I was a prostitute, perhaps because the town whose name I bear is famous for that trade. Others question my sanity and ask why it was necessary for that exorcism of troubling devils to be performed. They probably call me mad. The other followers, male, of course, know me as ‘one of the women’, useful for everyday tasks, but mainly disregarded. So on that day - when all hope had drained after his execution, the future seemed bleak and empty and even the tomb appeared to have been raided and his body stolen – it was hardly surprising that the men ignored me, ran back to the city and left me to weep alone. The voice was kind and questioning and I sobbed my story, not expecting help. But it came, in one word. ‘Mary,’ from one who spoke my name as if it mattered. My name is Mary. His name was and is and always will be, Jesus. Marjorie Dobson © 2019 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. From Unravelling the Mysteries, Stainer & Bell Ltd., 2019. Safe, locked inside that upper room Safe, locked inside that upper room, too scared to let the truth be known, disciples had to see their Lord before that truth could be their own. And Thomas, still so full of doubt, would not believe the tales they told till Christ appeared, to show his wounds - then his conviction made him bold. Yet doubts and fears returned again. Once more they locked themselves away until the Holy Spirit came on that inspiring, vital day. The truth is now a living fact. The love of God can never die. So bold apostles stood their ground – their living Lord is not a lie. We have not seen, but we believe and we must witness by our faith to living truth we have received, awakened by the Spirit’s breath. Marjorie Dobson © 2019 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. From Unravelling the Mysteries, Stainer & Bell Ltd., 2019. Metre: LM Tune: NIAGARA Poem: When what we thought was mystery When what we thought was mystery is rooted in the common place, and God is found in those who love, and those we love by grace; then we have grasped the Christmas story, reached its heart, beheld its glory. When scourge and cross are recognised in images from round the earth. When we admit complicity and gauge compassions' dearth; then we have grasped the Easter story, reached its heart, and felt its glory. When love and justice magnify and even mercy has no end; when hostages find liberty and enemies are friends; then we have grasped the Spirit's story, reached its heart, expressed its glory. Andrew Pratt © 2004 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.
Senses sharpened in the silence – Praise in time of Covid-19
Photo ©Andrew Pratt 2020
Senses sharpened in the silence,
gently, quietly, feel your breath,
know God’s love will never leave us,
now, or in our time of death.
In this time imagine bird song,
thunder of a mountain stream,
slap of waves along the shoreline,
things for which we hope or dream.
All the beauty of the starlight,
rainbow colours in the sky,
things that we can just imagine
feed our minds until we die,
fill our hearts with heightened wonder,
strain the sinews of our thought,
soon exhausting human language,
through the images we’ve caught.
Lifted up within the mystery,
now embodied in our praise,
mystic music moves our being,
sounding notes from phrase to phrase,
raising us beyond the present,
held in loving symphony;
God inspire our hearts with singing
in one cosmic harmony.
Andrew Pratt 19/4/2020
Words © 2020 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: CALON LAN
Wrapped up in the silk that shines silver in moonlight – response to ‘All things bright and beautiful’
Wrapped up in the silk that shines silver in moonlight,
the cycle of life will go on day by day.
The spider devours what is needed by nature;
for life to exist death must also hold sway.
The cancer that kills through an act of mutation,
the building of love, the destruction and strife;
the things labelled ‘evil’ are part of creation,
the earth’s moving surface is needful for life.
Our eyes are half open to vast constellations,
are blind to the particles light can’t resolve,
but in them and through them the mystery beyond us:
the one we name ‘God’ makes our wisdom dissolve;
for on through our living and final destruction,
beyond deep imagining, artists might hold,
this ‘God’, this enigma, the source of our being
will love through eternity, comfort, enfold.
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.
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Suggested tune: STREETS OF LAREDO
At a Hymn Society Conference some years ago I was asked for a hymn in response to ‘All things bright and beautiful’ which took ‘bad’ things seriously, things like cancer. This exploration of creation of ‘bad things’, technically theodicy, followed.
Published in More than hymns
O God, let intellect be held – God and the mystery of love
O God, let intellect be held
constrained, that I might simply sense
the depth, and mystery, of love
within this present tense.
As music sets the air aflame,
as sense is dumb and flesh retires
God, reach within my heart again
and fan those hidden fires.
As hands reach out to grasp the grace
that bread and wine should mediate,
reach back through hands that you would choose:
disclose, communicate.
Then held at once in paradox,
remembering in present time,
unite again this human flesh
with sacred love divine.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
© 2003 Stainer & Bell Ltd
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