November 20, 2014

 

Dear MLEPC Members and Friends:

 

The name "Martin Rinkart" is not familiar to many of us. We are however familiar with a great hymn he wrote, a hymn that we sing primarily at Thanksgiving time. We'll sing this hymn this Sunday morning at our 11:15 a.m. worship service. To conclude this letter, I shall provide the words of Rinkart's famous hymn so that we use them in praising God this Thanksgiving. First, let us consider the story of the man behind the hymn.

 

Rinkart was born in Saxon, Germany, in 1586, the son of a poor coppersmith. He eventually graduated from the University of Leipzig and was ordained as a Lutheran Pastor. At age 31, he began ministry in his hometown of Eilenberg just a few short months before the onset of the dreadful Thirty Year War. For three decades, Germany was the field upon which kings, princes, generals and armies vied for supremacy in Europe. Cities were under siege, crops destroyed, livestock decimated, and people died from war, pestilence, starvation, and disease. Conditions were brutal in Eilenberg. At one point, Rinkart was the only ordained pastor remaining who had survived the particularly devastating plague of 1637. Records indicate that it was not unusual for Rinkart to perform as many as fifty funerals in a single day.

 

Martin Rinkart died a year after the end of the Thirty Year War having buried close to 8,000 people during his 32 years of ministerial service in Eilenberg. In the midst of these difficult circumstances Martin Rinkart wrote 66 hymns including the words to what has become one of the best loved hymns of all time. Published in 1636, read the words that expressed this man's faith - "Now Thank We All our God."

 

Now thank we all our God

With heart and hands and voices,

Who wondrous things hath done,

In whom this 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

Through all our life be near us,

With ever joyful hearts

And blessed peace to cheer us;

And keep us in God's grace,

And guide us when perplexed,

And free us from all ills,

In this world and the next.

 

All praise and thanks to God,

Who reigns in highest heaven,

To Father and to Son

And Spirit now be given.

The one eternal God,

Whom heaven and earth adore,

The God who was, and is,

And shall be evermore.

 

Our God is strong to save;

He is our sure foundation.

He guides us through our days,

Set free from condemnation.

He does not faint or fail,

Nor leave us on the way,

Through all our journey long,

He is our hope and stay.

 

Martin Rinkart wrote verses 1 through 3. Verse 4 is added in coordination with Sunday's sermon entitled, "One for the Road" based on Psalm 121. Let us set aside time this Thanksgiving to express our gratitude to God as did Rinkart in both the best and worst of times.    

 

Pastor Tim

 

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