I am dragging, Father. Pretty sure it’s one of the not-so-good impacts of being around a bunch of kids regularly. But I am grateful that all the good way over balances the bad. Thank You for the blessings I receive!

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Yesterday at church, we focused on Thanksgiving, with a sermon entitled ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE. I love singing the old hymns that we get to sing every year on this Sunday – Come, Ye Thankful People, Come (1844), We Gather Together (1626), and then we closed with, Now Thank We All Our God (1636).

I’ve shared from a couple of hymn background devotional books in the past, and this last hymn, Now Thank We All Our God, has a very interesting story.

This long-standing hymn was written close to 400 years ago by a German pastor who was called to serve the state Lutheran church in his native city of Eilenberg, Germany at the age of 31. Martin Rinkart began his pastorate just as the horrific 30 Years’ War began (it lasted from 1618-1648). Shockingly so, this beautiful hymn was born out of some of the severest human sufferings imaginable.

Sadly, the war pitted Catholic and Protestant forces from various countries throughout Europe, against one another. Germany, the battleground of this conflict…was reduced to a state of misery that baffles description.

It’s hard to believe that the though the German population at the time was 16 million at the start of the war, it dwindled…to 6 million in that 30-year span!

Because Eilenberg was a walled city, it became a frightfully overcrowded refuge for political and military fugitives from far and near. Throughout these war years, several waves of deadly diseases and famines swept the city, as the various armies marched through the town, leaving death and destruction in their wake. The plague of 1637 was particularly severe. At its height, Rinkart was the only minister remaining to care for the sick and dying. Martin Rinkart’s triumphant, personal expressions of gratitude and confidence in God confirm for each of us this truth taught in Scripture, that as God’s children, we too can be “more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”*

Now thank we all our God with hearts and hands and voices,
who wondrous things hath done, in whom His world rejoices;
who from our mothers’ arms hath blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

O may this bounteous God thru 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 heav’n adore-
for thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. Romans 8:35, 37 NIV

*Amazing Grace: 366 Hymn Stories for Personal Devotions,
by Kenneth W. Osbeck. ©1990 by Kregel Publications, Grand Rapid, MI

Nov 21st, 2022, Mon, 7:10 pm