Some of you will remember the hymn, ‘Stay, Master, stay upon this heavenly hill’.
As the disciples want to continue in the purer air of the mountaintop, to stay eternally, Jesus
rebukes them:
No, saith the Lord, the hour is past, we go;
Our home, our life, our duties lie below.
While here we kneel upon the mount of prayer,
The plough lies waiting in the furrow there.
And the disciples respond:
There we must do it, serve him, seek him still.
The following hymn continues this theme of being lost in such wonder that we forget the needs that
we are called to meet:
Once transfiguration blinded
1 Once transfiguration blinded
those who climbed to follow Christ,
seeing through a mist of glory,
just a glimpse at once sufficed;
just a glimpse of holy heaven,
earth and heaven neatly spliced.
2 Light can blind us to the sorrow,
to the pain of poverty,
light of holy exaltation,
or the light of being free:
free of fear of want or hunger
resting in complicity.
3 Lost in thunder, bathed in wonder,
hands uplifted should we praise,
while, in destitution, neighbours,
wait for weeks, not merely days,
for the crumbs dropped from a table
that austerity displays.
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2018 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 8 7
Tune: WESTMINSTER ABBEY (Purcell)
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