hymnsandbooks

Friday 29 September 2017

Universal Credit? - a hymn


When clothing or shelter are absent or wanting,
as life becomes difficult, living is raw,
the need of a benefit, now becomes urgent,
yet often delayed and the poor remain poor.

Then how do we see this, as something we beg for?
A love gift assuaging the lack that we feel?
A present disguising our guilt and collusion,
as choices are made, and divisions are real?

But how can we live with such sharp separation,
our frail understanding of how others live?
And what is our charity, depth of our loving,
a sign of our sacrifice, what we can give?

For only when margins can meet at the centre,
when people in honesty walk hand in hand,
when clichés like ‘fairness’ and ‘being together’,
have met with extinction, will love fill this land.
© Andrew Pratt 28/9/2017. Tune: STREETS OF LAREDO
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.

Monday 11 September 2017

A Hymn in response to hurricanes and international flooding

Swirling winds and raging oceans
add to hazards we know well, 
jagged rocks and crashing breakers, 
currents swinging with the swell, 
into such a tortured maelstrom 
boats are launched and lives are saved, 
human beings loved and treasured 
where the waters heaved and raved.

Broken buildings, flooded rivers 
add a challenge to be met, 
nature compounds human carnage, 
sights we never will forget;
here where homes had offered comfort 
devastation meets our eyes 
while the thunder of the waters 
drowns the sound of human cries.

God, we cry, as lives are wasted, 
hold us in this living hell, 
where the floods and rising waters 
bring destruction, hold us well.
Lift us out of dereliction, 
help us reach to those in need, 
love them till all fear has foundered,
till they know they’re safe and freed.
© Andrew Pratt 10/9/2017
Tune: HYFRYDOL
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.