Carol shows situation initially in hand (5)
I believe the answer is:
psalm
'carol' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'situation initially in hand' is the wordplay.
'initially' indicates taking the first letters.
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'hand' becomes 'palm' (I've seen this before).
The initial letter of 'situation' is 's'.
's' put into 'palm' is 'PSALM'.
'shows' is the link.
(Other definitions for psalm that I've seen before include "Lamps for a sacred song" , "Sacred song from Old Testament" , "What's heard in church" , "Religious chant" , "OT song" .)