Saints | St Philip the Deacon | 11 October
1.
O God, whose word is lamp and guide,
Through mist and rain You walk beside;
By hill and shore, through bog and glen,
You send Your servants forth again.
2.
When hearts cry out, “Why hide Your face?”
You answer still with saving grace;
As streams revive the thirsty land,
Your strength renews the weary band.
3.
Like Philip on the desert way,
You lead us where Your Spirit may;
To stranger, seeker, friend unknown,
We bear the love that You have shown.
4.
From Gaza’s road to Erin’s shore,
One Gospel speaks for evermore;
Your word, a lantern in the night,
Makes darkened paths with mercy bright.
5.
Lord, teach us holy welcome’s art,
To hold the door and share the heart;
To break the bread, prepare the place,
And recognise Your hidden face.
6.
So with Saint Philip let us run
The race begun by Christ Your Son;
Till every land and sea proclaim
The glory of Your holy Name.
Walking the Desert Road in Bog and Glen
In Acts 8, the Holy Spirit sends Philip onto the wilderness road from Jerusalem to Gaza. There he encounters an Ethiopian court official, a eunuch, travelling home while reading from the prophet Isaiah. His question is simple and searching: “How can I, unless someone guides me?”
Philip does not arrive with a prepared speech. He listens. He begins with the question already being asked. Sitting beside the traveller, he opens the scriptures and helps him recognise in them the good news of Jesus Christ. It is an encounter shaped not by argument or coercion, but by attention, accompaniment, and the quiet movement of the Spirit.
There is something particularly striking about the person Philip meets. He is a foreigner, a powerful court official, and also a eunuch: someone whose place within the religious community was complicated by the boundaries of the ancient world. Yet on this lonely road there is no attempt to keep him at a distance. When water appears and he asks, “What is to prevent me from being baptised?”, the story moves towards welcome rather than exclusion.
That question still speaks to the Church.
This hymn brings Philip’s desert road into the landscape of mist and rain, hill and shore, bog and glen. It does not make Philip’s journey Irish; rather, it asks where that same Spirit might be leading us now. The wilderness road can appear wherever a stranger is searching, wherever someone wonders whether there is a place for them, or wherever another human being simply needs someone willing to walk beside them for a while.
There is something deeply pioneering about Philip’s ministry. He is sent beyond the familiar, onto a road where he cannot know beforehand whom he will meet or what will happen. He discovers that God is already at work there. In that sense, his journey speaks naturally to the Church’s renewed emphasis on pioneer ministry: not simply finding new ways of bringing people into what already exists, but going out, listening carefully, noticing where God is moving, and allowing new forms of Christian encounter and community to emerge.
That is also the “art of holy welcome”: to listen before speaking, to make room rather than guard the doorway, to share bread and companionship, and to recognise that Christ may already be present in the person we have been sent to meet.
Philip reminds us that mission begins with the Spirit rather than with us. Pioneer ministry begins in much the same way: not with the assumption that we carry God into an empty place, but with the expectation that God has gone before us.
From Gaza’s road to Erin’s shore, that calling remains. The landscape changes, but the Gospel does not. We are still sent along unexpected roads, towards unexpected people, carrying a word of mercy and discovering, sometimes, that the stranger has something to reveal to us as well.
Hymn information
First line: O God, whose word is lamp and guide
Text: Michael McFarland Campbell
Metre: LM (88.88)
Tune: Tallis Canon
Theme: St Philip the Deacon; Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch; mission and holy welcome
Scripture: Isaiah 40:27–41:1; Psalm 119:105-112; Acts 8:26-40; Luke 10:1-12
NDH-0349
Dedicated as a thanksgiving for the friendship and ministry of the Rev. Philip McKinley, Pioneer Minister, Dioceses of Meath & Kildare.
© Michael McFarland Campbell. 2026.
Permission granted for local church or parish use with attribution. Not for commercial reproduction.
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