Lord, our tears are not yet dry

Lord, our tears are yet to dry; 

Still to you we lift our cry.

Open up our eyes to see

What our work for you must be.

 

Come, dissolve these hearts of stone;

Make new hearts for love alone.

Touch minds closed and locked away;

Flood them with your light of day.

 

Lift our souls from dark despair; 

Show your purpose everywhere. 

Take our strength and make it new,

Fit for serving only you.

 

Fit our prayers with strong new feet,

Marching only to your beat

So that lives may yet be freed

From the fear this world does feed.

 

Lord, our tears are yet to dry

As we lift to you this cry:

Heal us now and make us whole,

Strength and mind and heart and soul.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, May 2022.

MUSIC: Given tune SONG 13, Orlando Gibbons, 1623.

Preferred tune TEBBEN, Timothy Hoekman, 1979. Copyright 1985 Faith Alive Christian Resources (hence not give here). 

Another text in response to tragedy, this one takes the shape of a prayer with more lean towards moving forward and doing what God leads us to do. Mark 12:30 becomes a framework for full commitment to the work of making right what is wrong, in this case, as God leads. I became acquainted with the composer of the preferred tune in graduate school (he was actually on my dissertation committee), though I only recently learned this tune (in anthem form) and became interested in making a text for it. This wasn't the prompt I would have chosen, but the two do seem to fit together. As the tune is under copyright it is not reprinted here; hymnary.org lists it as appearing in fourteen hymnals (I do know it's covered under OneLIcense.net at least). For the greater convenience of those who would like to use it quickly and may struggle with copyright issues, it is given here with an Orlando Gibbons tune that is, I feel fairly safe to say, outside the bounds of copyright.

Faith without works is dead

Faith without works is dead, and no more than a lie.

No more let "thoughts and prayers!" be heard when children fall and die. 

What good is such a call, when yet there is no will

To act and do what must be done such violence to still.

 

Faith without works is dead, no more than reckless pride. 

Sheer disobedience to God, and fruitless too beside.

Our words are useless when we will not meet the need; 

Our witness only matters when our word is met with deed.

 

Faith without works is dead, no more than vanity.

Will God's true church act boldly now for all the world to see?

What work now must be done for people all to thrive?

What deeds of love will make our faith become at last alive?

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, May 2022.

MUSIC: Suggested tune DIADEMATA, George Job Elvey, 1868.

 

 

After a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022. Or a church shooting in Laguna Hills, California, on May 15, 2022. Or a supermarket shooting in Buffalo, New York, on May 14, 2022. Or...

 

What things we own cannot give life

What things we own cannot give life;

Possessions will not make us whole. 

Their power cuts us like a knife 

And leaves great hurt deep in the soul.

 

Remember he who laid great claim

To wealth and fortune from the sod; 

In his vain hoarding he became

A pauper in the eyes of God.

 

So be on guard against all greed

That harms us all and brings great strife.

Cling to the Lord who meets your need; 

Hold fast to God who gives us life.

 

 

Text: Charles Spence Freeman, May 2022; after Luke 12:13-21.

Music: Suggested tune ERHALT UNS, HERR, Klug's Geistliche Lieder, 1543.

 

 

A response to the parable within Luke 12:13-21, on greed and the love of possessions, the harm greed  can bring, and the need to choose true life in God.