God, our Creator

God, our Creator, all of life creating,

You bless your people and our needs provide!

Yet we still groan, as if our lives were lacking;

In your abundance, put our fears aside.

 

God, our Creator, heaven declares your glory.

See how the sun shines out across the sky!

Yet we befoul and cloud its shine and splendor;

Show us anew your glory from on high.

 

God, our Creator, by your word creating,

In whom our hope is founded and made real,

Still we betray you, spoiling what you give us;

Set our minds right, restore us with your zeal.

 

God, our Creator, bountifully blessing,

Lavishly giving for our needs each day!

Still we complain that all is insufficient.

Teach us in love to seek your holy way.

 

God, our Creator, all you make we squander;

Heaven, earth, and seas we plunder and destroy.

Set us aright to live within creation

With adoration, wonder, hope, and joy.

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, July 2026.

MUSIC: Tune DONNE SECOURS, Genevan Psalter, 1551. 

 

 

 It hasn't even been two weeks but I already can't remember what prompted this one. Probably something at the Worship & Music Conference I had attended that week. Since I took it down on the Notes function on my phone, I clearly wasn't planning to write a hymn at that particular moment, but it happens that way sometimes. 

 

 

 

When creatures meant to roam the wild

When creatures meant to roam the wild

find freedom snatched away,

in cages locked or bound in chains

and suffering from our wounds and pains,

forgive us, God, we pray.

 

Stout lions, meant to roam in grasslands

free and unrestrained,

or tigers of the forest lands

are captured by foul human hands,

for human fun detained.

 

Sleek panthers, cougars, leopards, and

bobcats and cheetahs too,

were made by God for roaming free,

not held as "curiosity,"

bound in a "roadside zoo."

 

Those who exploit our human yen

for entertaining sights

breed creatures such for human gaze

in painful and unnatural ways,

all for our vain delights.

 

For creatures bound in such conditions,

God, we humbly pray;

but even more, strike down our yen

for painful fun, and teach us then

to hate such harmful play.

 

Teach us respect for all of life

in each and every way;

teach us to love them in their place,

not snatch them from their sacred space;

Good God, change us today.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, July 2026

MUSIC: Tune REST, Frederick Charles Maker, 1887

 

 

Prompted by a discussion at this morning's Routley Lecture at the PAM Worship & Music Conference, on creation (specifically "critters") in hymnody (short form: there's not much). I do have "All creatures of our God on high" on the record, but the discussion provoked another text, on a darker side of human fascination with wild cats.

  

 

Let our hearts be broken

Let our hearts be broken, let our souls be torn;

For the chaos 'round us, let us weep and mourn.

Violence and hatred, practiced in your name?

Your true gospel twisted into fear and shame?

 

How have we stood silent for so many years

While this anti-gospel stoked up angry fears?

Why did we not speak out until so, so late?

When the lie was shouted, why did we still wait?

 

Now our call to answer will no longer wait:

Speaking truth to falsehood, speaking love to hate;

Ev'n amidst such violence, injuries and pains,

Bearing witness only to the Christ who reigns.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, June 2026.

MUSIC: Tune KING'S WESTON, Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1925;

            other possible tune WYE VALLEY, James Mountain, 1876.

 

 

One of those inevitable attempts to express in a hymn some kind of response to <gestures around wildly> all this, especially when you realize you should have been speaking up long, long ago...

 

 

 

A man enslaved

A man enslaved, called "Useful,"

In bondage toiled for naught.

He might have been called "Useless"

If his work went all wrong.

But Paul called out his master

And in Christ's love he taught

To call this slave his brother,

Invite him to belong.

 

Our world still sees enslavement

For cruel profit's gain,

Inhuman treatment practiced

For products sold dirt cheap.

Have we no moral center,

To profit from such pain? 

Can we not call out evil? 

Can we not make that leap?

 

In other ways we mangle

Those God has called God's own;

We call them dirty, vagrants,

Or even "useless" too. 

Do we speak such debasement

To those whose hope is gone?

Good God, rebuke us ever

When we such damage do.

 

Dehumanizing others

Who do not look like us,

And yet Christ calls his family;

Have we so lost our way?

Now we must do Christ's bidding,

With nothing to discuss; 

To welcome all around us

Both now and every day.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, September 2025.

MUSIC: Tune LLANFYLLIN, Welsh melody.

Apparently that lectionary reading from Philemon stayed with me beyond the hymn written for it about a month ago. Here Onesimus ("Useful") becomes the starting point for facing the ways such dehumanization is still part of our world today and how the church has not faced up to that.

When Jesus, full of Spirit

When Jesus, full of Spirit, came into the lonely wilderness,

He faced a tempter bound to foil his earthly work and true witness.

Not pains of hunger, fame nor power would sway our Christ from standing fast.

Our Jesus, filled with Spirit, showed how we should follow to the last.

 

When filled with Spirit, Christians need not strain for power or for fear,

For God alone is all our power and God will lead us to draw near.

When filled with Spirit, Christians need not put our God unto the test;

We turn to God not for display, we turn for sustenance and rest.

 

When filled with Spirit, Christians need not seek out stones to turn to bread.

So many suffer hungry want, but our work is to share instead;

To lay aside our selfish pride and live so no one else has need,

To end the hoarding plunder wrought by raw, unyielding, selfish greed.

 

See how each testing faced by Christ points deep into our daily life:

When we give in to tempter's wiles, we fill our world with pain and strife.

But filled with Spirit we will live upon the words of God alone

Till all our hearts dwell in God's love with all temptation finally gone.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, March 2025, after Luke 4:1-13.

MUSIC: Tune YE BANKS AND BRAES, Scottish melody.

 

 

Somehow I had written two different texts on Matthew's temptation account, but never either the Mark or Luke stories. In this case the emphasis will fall on how those temptations Jesus faced play out in our own lives and what guidance we might draw from the experience. 

Stand down, O "men of God"

Stand down, O “men of God,”

To war is not your call;

Brothers in Christ, this is your work:

To love and to serve all. 

 

Stand down, O “men of God,”

No more of lesser things.

Live as our Jesus showed us how

So his true witness sings.

 

Stand down, O “men of God,”

Your work is not to hate;

This does not glorify our God

Whose love for all is great.

 

Stand down, O “men of God,”

Don’t lord it over all;

Women and men are both alike 

Ordained in Jesus’s call. 

 

Stand down, O “men of God,”

Alone is not your call;

To serve together is your work,

Brothers and sisters all.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, February 2025,

MUSIC: Tune ST. THOMAS, Aaron Williams, 1763.

 

Not a hymn for a worship service, at least not one I can immediately imagine. More like a teaching hymn? Self-instruction? Chastisement? I don't know, but I couldn't stop myself from writing it. 

We welcome you, O Christ

We welcome you, O Christ our Lord;

            We lift our praise in one accord.

We give you thanks in everything;

            We honor you as now we sing.

 

Yet your own word has called us out;

            The very welcome that we shout

Is called in question – doubt, indeed – 

            By how we turn from those in need.

 

The hungry stranger at our door,

            The one who scrubs our dirty floor,

The migrant, homeless; yes, our call

            Is always to receive them all.

 

While we your church have argued loud

            For power, for strength, for status proud,

You welcome these whom we’ve reviled

            As once you welcomed one small child.

 

Recall us to true welcome, Lord, 

            That all in you may be restored

To health and hope in everything,

            And we true praise to you might bring.

 

 

Text: Charles Spence Freeman, September 2021, after Mark 9:30-37.

Music: Suggested tune ROCKINGHAM, Second Supplement to Psalmody in Miniature, 1783; harm. Edward Miller, 1790.

A cursory reading of the indicated lectionary passage will make clear this is no close paraphrase; it is perhaps best described as a response, perhaps with some repentance about it, to that passage and Jesus's instruction to the disciples in it. 

When earth is standing dusty dry

When earth is standing dusty dry

We pray and plead for rain; 

And then when waters from the sky 

Bring flood and chaos, how we cry

For earth to dry again!

When will we learn? Oh, when?

 

This damaged earth has suffered so 

From schemes of our design. 

Yet, even when this truth we know, 

Our cravings will not let us go,

And nature we malign;

Our deeds are not benign.

 

These things we make unmake the earth; 

We kill it with our waste.

These creatures made with holy worth

Have no more place, but only dearth,

And fall away in haste, 

Their habitat debased.

 

Dear God! Will we yet spoil your world

Beyond what it can bear? 

Make us restrain, our wants in-curled,

Until with joy we see unfurled 

Creation everywhere.

Can we make this our prayer?

 

 

Text: Charles Spence Freeman, May 2023.

Music: Tune REPTON, C. Hubert H. Parry, 1888.

 

 

After a week spent driving halfway across the country, including through some particularly beautiful stretches I had not seen before, creation (and our spoilage of it) was on my mind, I guess. Exaggerated and unpredictable weather patterns are merely the tip of the iceberg, and it's hard to know if humanity has the will to rein in those behaviors that create such debasement of our planet and its climate. I'll never put it as eloquently as Bruce Cockburn does in his song "If a tree falls," but then that song would be harder for a congregation to sing, so there's that.

What do we worship

What do we worship? Who do we serve?

What claims our joy and our fire and our nerve?

Our true affection, where does it go?

To whom do we our loyalties show?

 

Refrain:

God and God only must be our love!

God in Christ Jesus sent from above,

God in the Spirit come like a dove,

God and God only must be our love.

 

Idols of power vie for the mind,

Power to rule o'er whatever we find. 

This is not holy, not in God's will - 

Perfect submission ours to fulfill.

 

Refrain

 

Idols of wealth now vie for the soul,

Thoughts that possessions might render us whole.

There is no truth in such a design; 

Give it away, your soul to refine.

 

Refrain

 

So many idols call to the heart,

Things which in God's sure design have no part.

Only in service, living and new,

Can we be holy, lovely and true.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, January 2023.

MUSIC: Tune ASSURANCE, Phoebe Palmer Knapp, 1873.

 

A reach back to a sturdy old gospel-song tune to write a hymn about idolatry. A silly thing to write, of course. Modern Christians would *never* be lulled into giving their ultimate devotion to any mere human or object, right?

Right???

O little town

O little town we saw before, so precious in our sight,

How have you passed those days and hours since that most holy night?

What of those restless travelers, bound here by law of Rome

To register and give account in their ancestral home?

 

What of that child born in this town, laid in a manger stall,

Whose birth drew shepherds to this place who heard an angel's call? 

What of his mother Mary dear, and father Joseph too, 

Those homeless migrants stranded in your town; what did you do?

 

O little town we call our own, or city great or small,

Or rural route, or mountainside, wherever home may fall: 

How do we welcome strangers who vainly seek a place?

May we yet learn to show them all God's mercy and God's grace.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, December 2022.

MUSIC: Tune FOREST GREEN, English folk melody; arr. Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1906.

            Alternate tune ST. LOUIS, Lewis Henry Redner, 1868.

 

 

Since this potential "twelve hymns of Christmas" thing hasn't let go yet, what was it like in Bethlehem after that night had passed? And what did become of all those folks who had to come in for that census, or to Mary and Joseph and the child Jesus, after that night? And what would happen in our town in such a circumstance?

Some lies we tell ourselves

Some lies we tell ourselves because we cannot bear to see

The people that our forbears were, and that we yet could be. 
"They did not really hate," we say, "they didn't, I just know!"

Dear God, please open up our minds, the bitter truth to show.

 

Some lies we tell ourselves because we have a dreadful fear

That those we love would turn aside if that truth they could hear.

Lord, teach us that we're not alone in having things to hide; 

We all have ugly history we'd rather put aside.

 

Some lies we tell ourselves because we deeply dread to face

The bleak and angry sins that so consume the human race, 

And yet we must - we know this, Lord; if we'd be fully true,

To face these sins of history is something we must do.

 

Teach us that facing history's truths is not a prisoning thing;

Indeed, true freedom only comes when, in the words we sing,

We face the sins that we and our ancestors once embraced; 

Those lies we told ourselves can then be banished and erased.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, November 2022.

MUSIC: Tune SALVATION, Kentucky Harmony, 1816.

 

 

This text is basically a first reaction to a ... the best word I can come up with is "pilgrimage" to The Legacy Museum and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice (aka "the lynching memorial") in Montgomery and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. In a time in which many just won't face the ugly parts of history, some deny them outright, and some even seek to enshrine such forgetting in law and education, such banishing and forgetting seems inimical to a faith that places any value on confession and repentance (which, I think, includes Christianity...?). 

[Note: this does contain a few "sins" of hymn writing, it's true -- contractions!!!??? The tone of this one, as it formed in my head, seemed to demand that some polish give way to a more vernacular and unpolished idiom. I might change my mind eventually. Who knows?]

 

Worlds of song

Worlds of song are called to life,

Joined in prayer and praise.

Grace is sung around the world,

Sung in many ways.

Yet some lift up cries of pain,

Canticles of need; 

For such longing, may our song

Plant a holy seed. 

 

Songs of praise are known to all

Churches everywhere,

Praise and glory on our lips

In the songs we share.

Yet for those with broken hearts,

Who will sing their song?

Dare we lift our voice for

Sufferers of wrong?

 

As our voices, lifted high,

Loud hosannas raise,

Singing glory to our God

And to Jesus praise, 

What of those whose hearts are lost,

Broken by our greed?

Is there space to sing of grief

With the ones in need?

 

Midst our adulation singing,

Midst our songs of joy,

Can we see that how we live 

Has power to destroy?

Will we change our wasteful lives

And destructive speech?

May we finally, in our song,

Let the suffering teach.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, July 2022

MUSIC: Tune TOKYO, Japanese gagaku mode, Isao Koizumi, 1958.

 

Inspired by experiences at the centennial anniversary conference of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, which I attended July 17-21, 2022. In particular hearing the words of a cohort of hymn writers and scholars from Japan reflecting on the challenges of creating hymns for their church stood out, and also likely set off this tune in my head. (Their work was encapsulated in the collection pictured below. Full disclosure: I had the extreme pleasure and privilege to develop three of the translations/paraphrases included in this collection for the conference, so maybe the seed has been in my brain longer than I know.)

NOTE: since the copyright status of this tune isn't entirely clear - it seems to be copyrighted? - it is not included here; it can be found in Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal (#311 and #813) and twenty-something other hymnals as well.