Here's another hymn worth considering for Sunday (the weekend after Black Saturday in Victoria, February 2009). Appropriate in the context of prayers of intercession and healing in the light of the bushfire tragedy.

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Origins: This song comes from John L. Bell and Graham Maule of the Iona Community. The words were sung after sixteen school children and their teacher were killed by a gunman in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996.

Ideas for Use:

For a healing service. As part of an intercessory prayer. In situations of distressing news. For a funeral.

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WE CANNOT MEASURE HOW YOU HEAL

We cannot measure how you heal

or answer every sufferer's prayer,

yet we believe your grace responds

where faith and doubt unite to care.

Your hands, though bloodied on the cross,

survive to hold and heal and warn,

to carry all through death to life

and cradle children yet unborn.

**

The pain that will not go away,

the guilt that clings from things long past,

the fear of what the future holds,

are present as if meant to last.

But present too is love which tends

the hurt we never hoped to find,

the private agonies inside,

the memories that haunt the mind.

**

So some have come who need your help

and some have come to make amends,

as hands which shaped and saved the world

are present in the touch of friends.

Lord, let your Spirit meet us here

to mend the body, mind and soul,

to disentangle peace from pain

and make your broken people whole.

Words: John L. Bell and Graham Maule

Music: Traditonal Scottish Folk Melody

Tune: <http://www.reformedworship.org/downloads/62_WeCannotMeasure.mid>http:// http://www.reformedworship.org/downloads/62_WeCannotMeasure.mid

(Copyright. The Iona Community.)

For more details see: http://www.reformedworship.org/magazine/article.cfm?article_id=1103