Tag: peace

Great God, your love has held our lives – Remembrance Hymn

1	Great God, your love has held our lives
	through all the years down to this day.
	Your constant presence held us fast:
	remain with us we plead and pray.
	We've seen the ruins left by war,
	the tumbled buildings, street by street;
	some heard the voices that they loved
	and cried for those they'd no more meet.
	
2	As time moves on some memories fade,
	some griefs we shared lie in the past;
	for others pain is just as sharp,
	we know their hurt will always last.
	Some human acts have swept away
	our partners, parents, children, friends,
	some people we had never known;
	the memory lives and never ends.
	
3	Beyond this day we try to live:
	a sinew of each life survives,
	but where is God in hurt and hate?
	The questions stay to haunt our lives.
	Help us to build a better world
	not fuelled by vengeance, fed by greed;
	a world in which we all can live,
	what ever colour, race or creed.

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: LMD
Tune: JERUSALEM

Other resources: Worshipcloud

Hymn of Seasons

From season to season, 
through death and re-birth,
this world, through its phases, 
shows love has no dearth.

Such love is for sharing, 
to do good to all,
to nurture well-being, 
to echo God's call.

Through sensitive reason 
we fathom the need
of neighbours, of nature;
we subjugate greed.

We offer each other 
the kiss of God's peace,
embracing earth's harmony, 
hatred will cease.

Through summer and autumn, 
through winter's release,
we welcome spring's coming 
with nature's increase.

All praise for the gifting 
of harvest and life,
all power to the ending 
of all human strife.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2002 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 11 11 11
Tune: DATCHET

Cities of sanctuary – hymn for refugee week

Cities of sanctuary, places of safety, 
here where all strangers are welcomed and blessed, 
we stand with Jesus in love of our neighbour, 
here in our actions his love is expressed.
	
We will act justly while offering mercy, 
nurturing humbly a gospel of peace, 
welcome all people regardless of status, 
counter celebrity, value the least.
	
Here in a world that is cruel and unyielding 
God's hospitality values the poor; 
this is the scandal of love without limits, 
loving the unloved, then loving them more.
	
We will not rest till each migrant is welcomed. 
We will share bread till the hungry are fed. 
We will confront each injustice that greets us, 
loving with vigour till hatred is dead.

Andrew Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2008 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: STEWARDSHIP

With thanks to Inderjit Bhogal for his work, example and inspiration

Peace – a hymn reflecting on Jesus’ words to his disciples

Peace…

Easter seems long past, but at a time when our minds are still being drawn to Ukraine, and politics at home feel uncertain, my thoughts have drifted back. When Jesus come to his disciples after his crucifixion he came, not with condemnation, but with peace. Perhaps we still need that assurance of peace in our own, our present time. But  step back for a moment to that upper room…

He speaks of peace while all inside 
disciples' minds are churned about; 
their memories haunt their waking time, 
while day and night are fused by doubt.
He speaks of peace while all the world 
will clamour at our open door, 
while shards of music sing and break 
with light in discord on the floor.
	
Into this chaos spirit spills,
a calming notion, 'God is good', 
and real as life, the Christ was there,
the Christ they'd hammered to the wood.
This God it is who offers peace 
to bound disciples held by fear, 
who breaks impossibilities, 
who makes the clouded way seem clear.

Into this calm we'll step and stay, 
in love's assurance find God's peace 
with those whose feet had turned to clay, 
we'll find that fear will stop, will cease.
And in this moment, in this time 
within a world so torn by death, 
again we'll try to live out peace, 
with every lasting, living breath.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2012 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
8 8 8 8 D
Tune: YE BANKS AND BRAES