Tag: people

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



We dedicate ourselves to exploration – science/worship compared in a hymn

We dedicate ourselves to exploration,
to sound the height and depth of Godly love,
but if we lock ourselves within our churches
what worth is it to raise our hands above?

Like those who seek in scientific research,
behind closed doors committed to their task,
we find ourselves as lost to human pleading
until we hear the things that others ask.

Each theory bears its fruit in application,
our praise makes sense when others feel God’s grace;
until that time our search, it seems, is wasted,
a stark, unholy vacuum fills this place.
Andrew Pratt 19/2/2019
Tune: INTERCESSOR

After ‘When the church of Jesus shuts its outer door’, Fred Pratt Green, and Jim Al-Khalili’s interview in The Life Scientific of Sir Gregory Winter.

Words © 2019 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England,
http://www.stainer.co.uk.
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