Tag: Ukraine

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

Mothering Sunday? UKRAINE – first draft

God is among all the cries of the dying, 
buried in fear amid hurt and disdain, 
breathing the dust of destruction, despairing,
holding each mother and feeling her pain.


God, like a mother, once torn from her children, 
weeps in the darkness, has nowhere to turn, 
fenced by the horror and starved by indiff’rence,
nations watch blindly while homes fall or burn.


God, stand beside us, God mother and comfort, 
God you despaired as you hung, bled and died, 
now in this moment, God hold and enfold us, 
interpose Love where all love was denied.

Andrew Pratt (born 1948)

Words © 2022 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.

11 10 11 10

Tune: STEWARDSHIP



A number of my hymns selected by Pam Rhodes reflecting on Ukraine and included in Hearts & Hymns, Premier Radio including ‘We hear the news in anguish’

Each of these links will open an audio file from the programme first aired on 13th March 2022 –

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

All of Andrew Pratt’s hymns are copyright Stainer & Bell Ltd and texts can be found on HymnQuest

Pam Rhodes – Hearts & Hymns, Premier Christian Radio, 13/20 March 2022 – Ukraine, suffering, war and peace

Reflections for Ukraine based on some of my texts on Premier Christian Radio were broadcast (Freeview channel 725) on Sunday 13th March 2022 0800 hours (UK)

A video prepared for SUNDAY NIGHT LIVE is available here with thanks to Pam Rhodes and Gareth Moore (to be broadcast Sunday 20th March 2022 at 1800 hours UK)

Also see hymn @ https://hymnsandbooksblog.uk/2022/03/01/we-hear-the-news-in-anguish-hymn-at-time-of-russian-invasion-of-ukraine/