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: Russia
A hymn published in 1997 still pertinent in a world torn by war and carnage – with tune by John Kleinheksel
Lives like yours and mine, contorted – as we live in a world contorted by war and hatred, during a week remembering Hamas action of 7th October 2023 and living with Israel’s response, together with war and carnage in so many places on our planet.
1 Lives like yours and mine, contorted:
Genocide has been reported,
Wrong seems right, it's all distorted;
Christ! What would you do?
2 Seeing babies starving, bleeding,
Hearing mothers' desperate pleading,
Would you wring your hands, unheeding?
Christ! What would you do?
3 Watching buildings ruined, burning,
Hearing tank tracks rumble, churning,
Would you walk on by, not turning?
Christ! What would you do?
4 Sensing fear that chills the city,
Families threatened without pity,
Would you pray your prayers, so pretty?
Christ! What would you do?
5 We have seen it, all the sorrow,
We will see the same tomorrow,
Must this pattern always follow?
Christ! What should we do?
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 1997 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. Originally published in Blinded by the Dazzle https://stainer.co.uk/shop/b840/
Metre: 8 8 8 5
Tune: THERE’S NO GREATER NAME THAN JESUS (Complete Mission Praise)
John R. Kleinheksel Sr has composed the following tune which may be used with acknowledgement.
This tune is now to be acknowledged as Copyright Stainer & Bell Ltd address as for the text.
An audio file of the tune is at the link below.
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
God is crying mid the carnage – a hymn at the time of Ukrainian Christmas
God is crying mid the carnage of a thousand broken bones; in the dust and fallen rubble of our long discarded homes. Where our children play out stories of the visions they have seen, God is weeping over losses, knowing just what might have been. What if love instead of horror filled the passion of our lives, could these stories be re-written where humanity survives? God still with us, God among us, sow new seeds of love through grace; help us look at one another building hope in every place. Andrew Pratt (8/1/2023) Words © 2023 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: 8.7.8.7 Tunes: CROSS OF JESUS (Stainer); LAUS DEO (Redhead) Written after listening to the BBC Radio 4 Sunday Service on 8/1/2023 ‘The message that Ukraine is trying to convey to the world as it celebrates its own Christmas Day’. The programme posed the question, 'Where is God' in this war? See also We hear the news in anguish - Thoughts on pacifism - God's on our side
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