The truth is, I sing a lot more than I pray.  And I know that the deity does not have ears or eyes or a nose or hands.  We don’t even have the right pronouns!  We can’t say “it” when speaking of God and “him/her” just seems a bit trite.  So I’ll say “him” here, though I think gender is another thing the deity is not limited by.  We poor humans have just made him in our own image so our little minds can even think about him at all.  Still, I hope the words I sing rise like sweet incense to his nose and do not fall upon deaf ears.

Yesterday, for our recessional hymn at St. Paul’s, we sang the 20th-century words of William Reid to the century-older hymn tune Llangloffan.  It’s hard enough for me to recess and sing at the same time, so I was glad I had already “gotten over” the words during our pre-service rehearsal. How amazingly they are both timeless and timely.  The first verse was the perfect prayer for the MIddle East right right now:

Oh, God of every nation, of every race and land,

redeem the whole creation with your almighty hand;

where hate and fear divide us and bitter threats are hurled,

in love and mercy guide us and heal our strife-torn world.

“Bombs Falling,” LunaOp, mixed media, 2007

Bombs falling, yesterday, Gaza.