Following the reprise of 'God's on our side', Dean McIntyre asked for a new hymn specific to this anniversary. It can be used freely with acknowledgement.
Great God your love has held our lives
across the years down to this day.
Your constant presence held us fast:
remain with us we plead and pray.
We watched the towers, we saw the flame,
the clouds of dust swept down the street;
we heard the voices that we loved
and cried for those we’d no more meet.
As time moves on some memories fade,
the grief we shared lies in the past,
for others pain is just as sharp,
this present hurt will always last.
A human act has swept away
our partners, parents, children, friends,
some people we had never known,
the memory lives and never ends.
Beyond this day we try to live:
a sinew of each life survives,
but where is God in hurt and hate?
The questions stay to haunt our lives.
Help us to build a better world
not fuelled by vengeance, fed by greed;
a world in which we all can live,
what ever colour, race or creed.
© Andrew Pratt 18/8/2011
Tune: JERUSALEM (Parry)
Commissioned by Dean McIntyre (United Methodist Church (USA)) for the 10th Anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Centre
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