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.