What happened to the covenant,
the rainbow in the sky,
that signed an end to flood and storm?
Still people stand and cry.
The floods still come, the waters rage,
while homes are swept away,
the covenant, of which God spoke,
seems of another day.
And yet amid experience,
a mystery remains,
a sense in spite of all we see
that love survives, sustains.
The rainbow arch still signs a truth,
God’s covenant of care
will never leave us without love,
in turmoil God is there.
For nothing now in all the earth
below, or heaven above
will separate us from Christ’s grace
or tear us from God’s love.
© Andrew Pratt 7/2/2012
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.
Metre: CM
Tunes: RODWELL; OSWALD’S TREE; NOX PRAECESSIT
Tag: Romans 8
Nothing can tear us from the love – hymn – Romans 8
Nothing can tear us from the love
that breathed creation into birth,
that nurtured, mothered what we are
and placed us on this fragile earth.
We walk through chaos, fraught with fear,
where death distils its dark demands,
as tragedy pulls curtains down
and care is shattered, no more stands.
In all this stuff that forms our lives,
each place where hope seemed flawed or veiled,
in spite of all, through shadowed times,
a shimmering shard of light prevailed.
And nothing now in all the world,
it seems, can rip me from the grace,
that grace that holds me still in love,
in this and every future place.
Andrew Pratt 21/3/2019
Tune: O WALY WALY
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.
Written for David Hamflett
hymnsandbooks 