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Beyond impossibility (website only)

The death of Professor Stephen Hawking in March 2018 inspired this reflective hymn


Beyond impossibility
where concepts such as time and space
evaporate, are meaningless,
there flows an endless stream of grace.

Deep in the darkness laughter rocks
as human minds are changed and swayed,
as concrete truths are shaken down
and doctrines challenged or betrayed.

The greatest minds that have evolved
have opened wonder, filled with awe,
have pointed to infinity
yet left a darkness to explore.

Unmeasured depths of gracious love,
of Godly mischief reach and range,
while new beginnings light our world,
unlooked for, awesome, wondrous, strange.

'In respect for Stephen Hawking'

Words: Andrew Pratt (born 1948) © March 2018 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England, www.stainer.co.uk. Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.

Metre: 88.88.

Suggested tunes: This text can be used with a broad range of familiar tunes. Both “O Waly, Waly” (StF 607) and “Rockingham” (StF 287i) offer flowing melodies that reflect the idea of an “endless stream of grace” (v.1) and also float upwards on the word “evaporate” (v.1, line 3). Alternatively, “Herongate” (StF 415) suggest a boldness that perhaps echoes the range of Stephen Hawking’s vision.

See Andy Murphy’s recent Easter hymn that connects a contemporary understanding of the creation with the resurrection of Christ: A new day dawns – an Easter hymn (website only).