Father, it has been a wonderful day! Thank You for waking me and walking by my side throughout this day. Thank You for the blessings of my beautiful wife! Thank You for the ability to get so much done, at home and for church, as well. All praise to my heavenly Father!
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Thankful. Grateful. Am I? I sure try to be. But I am also sure that I should be continually grateful for all of my many blessings, not just occasionally but continually.
Coming into this past Sunday, I was emailing back and forth with the lady who leads music at my one church. She expressed that Thanksgiving hymns were amongst her favorites. I agreed and said that I felt that they fell in the same comfort zone as Christmas carols…homey and warm.
So, since this has been a long busy day and that when this post is read it will be Thanksgiving Day – at least in the United States – I have decided to share a bit of history behind one of our well-loved Thanksgiving hymns. I found this information online on a blog called Aleteia.
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German pastor Martin Rinkart served in the walled town of Eilenberg during the horrors of the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648. Eilenberg became an overcrowded refuge for the surrounding area. The fugitives suffered from epidemic and famine. At the beginning of 1637, the year of the Great Pestilence, there were four ministers in Eilenberg. But one abandoned his post for healthier areas and could not be persuaded to return. Pastor Rinkhart officiated at the funerals of the other two.
As the only pastor left, he often conducted funeral services for as many as 40 to 50 persons a day–some 4,480 in all. In May of that year, his own wife died. By the end of the year, the refugees had to be buried in trenches without services.
In the face of overwhelming pressure, constant risk and horrendous conditions, Rinkart never stopped ministering to the people of his city. He gave away nearly everything he owned to the poor and needy, though he could barely clothe and feed his own children. He mortgaged his own future income to provide for his family and his community.
At one point toward the end of the war, the Swedish army surrounded the city and demanded an enormous ransom from the impoverished and starving citizens. Knowing his people didn’t have the money, Rinkart pleaded with the Swedes to lower the amount, only to be rejected.
It’s reported that Rinkart returned to the city, fell on his knees and said, “Come, my children, we can find no hearing, no mercy with men, let us take refuge with God.” He then began to pray so fervently that the Swedish general was moved to lower his price to less than five percent of the original sum.
After nearly thirty years of ceaseless struggles, it began to look like peace was within grasp. Wanting to give his children a song to sing to God in thanks at the dinner table, Rinkart sat down and composed what would become one of the most well-known Thanksgiving hymns of all time — “Now Thank We All Our God.” In fact, it’s been said that aside from Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” no other song is sung more often in Lutheran churches today than Rinkart’s simple tune.
Yet, while living in a world dominated by death, Rinkart wrote this timeless prayer of thanksgiving for his children—a reminder to be grateful to God for all things, at all times:
Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!
All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given;
The Son and Him who reigns with Them in highest Heaven;
The one eternal God, whom earth and Heaven adore;
For thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.
Nov 27th, 2019, Wed, 7:45 pm
