This page is provided so that you can hear the tunes of items which we use in church. Mostly they are written by the vicar. Please note that they are copyright - we are very happy to give permission to you to use them, but we would like to hear about it. Please include any use on your Christian Copyright Licence returns.
Down this page:
- the words,
- the story,
- the sheet music,
- media player.
Beautiful Earth
Beautiful Earth
Beautiful Earth!
Waiting long ages
'ere human sages
came to birth.
Loved and adored,
proclaiming design
by maker divine:
its Lord.
Green, white and blue:
creatures and plants
from mammoths to ants
of every hue.
Pleasing the eye,
achieving its goal,
and lifting our soul
on high.
Stage for God's fight.
Place of his loss
by death on a cross
to_address our plight.
Killed in our place
that we may believe
and come to receive
his grace.
Smoke fills the morn.
How have our nations
let God's creation
be so torn?
Help us arise
and strengthen our hand
to rescue our land
and skies.
Ours to enjoy,
ours to take care
and cherish and share,
and not destroy.
Help us repair:
may our generation
show your creation
care.
Words and tune copyright © John Hartley 2006.
Story behind the song
The tune for this song was written for Andrew Pratt's lyric "Putting down words, but picking up people", a song about the ministry of Jesus, which he described to me as "needing a tune and being in a folksy style". So here's a folk-tune for it.
But almost as soon as I'd written it, it seemed to me that the alternating minor and major of the tune suggested the feelings many of us have about environmental matters: that we have a world which is beautiful but spoiled, unique in God's design yet vulnerable to misuse, which we can rescue if we can muster collective will by God's help. So the words didn't take many hours to put together either.
John Hartley
Windows Media Player. When you click the left-hand "play" button your computer should have started to play the tune. If it didn't, you might be able to get the tune by clicking here, or by right-clicking the link, choosing "save target as", saving it onto your computer, and then opening it with a music-playing program.
Please remember that a midi file of a tune isn't supposed to be a state-of-the-art musical arrangement - it is only supposed to give a basic idea of how the tune goes. Any reasonable organist / keyboard player / music group could make it sound far better.