At at a time of continued war in Israel/Palestine and Ukraine/Russia as people seek, or fear, to protest what might our Christian response be?
If God in love invests us with a voice,
and given hell on earth, a human choice,
we cannot cry our tears into this night
if we are silent with our people’s plight.
Don’t say that they are foreign, not our own,
these faces greeting rocket, tank or drone,
for as these people flee towards our shore
they seek for care and safety, nothing more.
Humanity, the common life we share,
is all that’s left that we can hold and bear,
so as we look into each human face,
see Christ and through God’s Spirit offer grace.
Andrew Pratt 7/9/2025
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: 10.10.10.10
Tune: EVENTIDE; ST AGNES (Langran)
Tag: Palestine
Extravagant horror – a world at war with itself
Extravagant horror, beyond our conceiving,
the rain of this terror confounds our believing,
the thunder, war’s lightning, once deaf’ning, then blinding,
has sculpt human madness, to hell we are sliding.
Humanity harbours such hidden aggression,
the need to reap vengeance to counter oppression,
the screams of the innocent, tears of depression,
white noise of the agony, warfare’s obsession.
And now hope is lost, there is no compensation,
no sense of relief for each people, each nation,
some milit’ry folk will admire each citation
while leaving the children in wild conflagration.
© Andrew Pratt 30/9/2024
The sky, at sunset, still bleeding…
When the sky at sunset, bleeding, mirrors pain that fells our hope;
it seems that love is fast receding, sowing tears that can’t be quelled.
Can it be that God, seceding, leaves this world, all grace expelled?
When the streets are warm with terror, as emotions run or seize,
singing notes of music shudder, when God’s tempo should relieve,
must we lose the spirit’s rudder, losing hope?
We start to grieve.
When the darkness is descending, night a quiet, yet chilling, shroud,
folding round us bleak, unending, muting what we cry aloud,
is God near, with grace transcending fear and dread, defeat or cloud?
© Andrew Pratt 27/7/2016/2020/2024
Statement of the President and Vice-President of the Methodist Church UK – Israel-Palestine
Now hell is here
Now hell is here, and words are cheap,
a bloodied sheet, a shattered bed…
as women, men and children weep,
while prayer is silent, felt not said.
With seeds of vengeance sown not sought,
while roots in hearts of flesh, not stone,
bring carnage traced with quiet thought
as guilt will fester none will own.
And distantly, in muffled sighs,
of deep regret and dark despair
we wring our hands and harbour lies,
dare not admit the blame we share.
© Andrew Pratt 17/10/2023
Suggested tune: ROCKINGHAM
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