Listen for God (website only)
- Elements of Worship:
- Gathering
- Theme:
- Gathering in God's Presence
- Theme:
- Our Journey with God
- Theme:
- The Holy Scriptures
- Authors & translators:
- Brown, Andrew
- Hymns on StF+:
- Hymns only online (submit to stfplus@methodistchurch.org.uk)
- Composers & arrangers:
- Beesley, Jo
Listen for God who speaks within our hearts,
in wildest thoughts, when we are least aware,
and in the silence at the heart of prayer.
Listen for God inhabiting the edge;
heard through the lost, unwanted, dispossessed,
those at the margins, easily oppressed.
Listen for God in holy scriptures’ voice;
learning from all who wrote how lives were stirred,
transformed, reborn by the great, living Word.
Listen for God, for other voices call,
encouraging our selfish, careless ways;
ignoring others, all the costs they pay.
Listen for God, so all may fully live;
for we must hear the truth and change our ways
to shape a new world, one of love and praise.
Words: © Andrew Brown, March 2017
Inspired by Alison Tomlin at Methodist Conference 2010 (see below)
Music: © Jo Beesley Download as a PDF
Metre: 10 10 10
More information
Andrew writes:
"This hymn was inspired by the Revd Alison Tomlin’s Presidential Address to the Conference of the British Methodist Church in 2010. She was talking about ‘Listening to God’ and suggested that there are as many different ways of listening as there are people; we do not all listen in the same way.
"I was particularly struck by the thoughts that we may hear God when we do not expect (verse 1) and that God’s centre may be at the edge of, and well away from, the centre of our lives (verse 2).
"Verse 4 is different from the pattern of the preceding stanzas [Ed. it comments on the negative force of some kinds of voices] but it is often only as we listen for (and hear) God that we begin to recognise the other voices that influence our actions."