Forgiveness for Humanity – A Hymn for Lent

Loving God, can we have forgiveness for humanity

Can you forgive the whole human race

Can you help us start again, with a new kind of spirit

So peace, love and mercy become the human way

So forgive us for the genocides,

The slave trades and the holocaust,

Forgive all our brutal wars

For the desperate love of money,

Ethnic cleansing and the arms trade

For the racism, torture and the cruelty

Give us a new spirit – a spirit of hope

Give us a new way that’s making us whole

May we treat all with justice and with equality

So loving our neighbour becomes the human way

And loving our planet becomes the natural way

Forgive our generation for stealing from the future

Thinking we have the right to do whatever we want

Forgive us for plundering so much from the planet

Leaving climate carnage for generations to come

Give us a new spirit – a spirit of hope…

Forgive us for choking a living breathing planet

And filling the air with fumes

Forgive us for ending species that you have created

And leaving plastic to fill up the oceans

Give us a new spirit – a spirit of hope…

Need a revolution of love against the evil of empire

Need a revolution of love against capitalist greed

Forgive us for colonialism and stealing of land

Forgive us for our nuclear weapons

Give us a new spirit – a spirit of hope…

Loving God, can we have forgiveness for humanity

Can you forgive the whole human race

Can you help us start again, with a new kind of spirit

So peace, love and mercy become the human way

So loving our planet becomes the natural way

So a lifestyle of love becomes the human way

And loving our planet becomes the natural way

Words & music by Garth Hewitt

www.garthhewitt.org