Tag: tears

If God in love invests us with a voice – a Christian response to war?

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)

‘Drones, not angels herald horror’ – a hymn for Remembrance in a new millennium through Advent to Christmas

‘Drones, not angels herald horror’ a hymn for 2024
from Remembrance through Advent to Christmas

Drones, not angels herald horror,
children shelter without hope,
singing now, but hell will follow.  	
God, through grace, give strength to cope.
Here where human hearts are broken, 
all cried out, no tears to shed, 
prayers are held, for fear, unspoken,
shrouded now in clouds of dread.

God reach deep through hateful anger 
bent on vengeance, recompense;
listen through our warring clangour, 
re-enliven common sense.
Guide us through the dust and rubble,
where our blood has stained the earth,
turning fields where all is stubble, 
seeding love that signs new birth.

Andrew E Pratt (4/11/2024)
Words © 2024 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
Tune: HYFRYDOL; SCARLET RIBBONS or, perhaps, BLAENWERN 

A completely new hymn for 2024 reminding us how different war is now but, nevertheless, with comparable suffering. Suitable, perhaps, for Remembrance and through Advent to Christmas given the continuing situation in the Middle East, Ukraine/Russia and many other places.