God in His Love for Us

God in His Love for Us

Text by Fred Pratt Green (1903-2000)

Sung to the hymn tune WALLOG by H. Walford Davies (1869-1941)

Genesis 1:28 [God] blessed them, and said, “Have many children, so that your descendants will live all over the earth and bring it under their control. I am putting you in charge of the fish, the birds, and all the wild animals. 

V. 1 God in His love for us lent us this planet,

Gave it a purpose in time and in space: 

Small as a spark from the fire of creation,

Cradle of life and the home of our race.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has set the right time for everything. He has given us a desire to know the future, but never gives us the satisfaction of fully understanding what he does. 

V. 2 Thanks be to God for its bounty and beauty,

Life that sustains us in body and mind:

Plenty for all, if we learn how to share it,

Riches undreamed of to fathom and find.

Revelation 11:18 "The heathen were filled with rage, because the time for your anger has come, the time for the dead to be judged. The time has come to reward your servants, the prophets, and all your people, all who have reverence for you, great and small alike. The time has come to destroy those who destroy the earth!”

V. 3 Long have our human wars ruined its harvest;

Long has earth bowed to the terror of force;

Long have we wasted what others have need of,

Poisoned the fountain of life at its source.

Psalm 24:1 The world and all that is in it belong to the Lord; the earth and all who live on it are his.

V. 4 Earth is the Lord's:  it is ours to enjoy it,

Ours, as His stewards, to farm and defend.

From its pollution, misuse, and destruction,

Good Lord, deliver us, world without end!