What's Tony Thinking

Giving Thanks When It Ain’t Easy

One of my favorite hymns is, “Now Thank We All Our God.” I love the words, the tune and the sound of great organ in the midst of a singing congregation.

“Now Thank We All Our God,” was written in 1636 by the Lutheran pastor, Martin Rinkart. Rinkart served the church in the walled city of Eilenburg, Germany for more than thirty years.

But there’s more to story.  In the year Rinkart wrote “Now Thank We All Our God,” Eilenburg was devastated by the plague. There were 4,000 deaths. As the only surviving pastor in Eilenburg, Rinkart found himself performing scores of funerals each day, including the funeral of his own wife. After the plague came famine. Moreover, Rinkart’s ministry coincided with the Thirty Years War (1618 to 1638) in Europe. During the war Eilenburg was invaded three times by the armies of Sweden.

So the hymn was not written in the midst of peace, plenty and prosperity, nor as a kind of confident blessing upon such times. Quite the contrary: it was written during times of terrible loss, grief and suffering. Behind Rinkart’s hymn is a question, maybe the question, “Can God be trusted in hard times, in the midst of loss and suffering?” Can God be praised, as the prophet Habakkuk wrote, not just when the harvest is abundant but when “the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines”? (3:17)

The situation for most of us is nothing like that of Rinkart and his congregation. I, for one, have tons of things to be grateful for, and I imagine you do as well. Still, we live in a time of testing. We worry about the future of the church, of our nation and of the world. For some there will be a figurative empty chair at the Thanksgiving table this year. We’ve lost someone, someone imporatant to us. Or perhaps instead of a full house for Thanksgiving you are a couple coping with an empty nest?  Can we trust God in such times? Can we sing “Now Thank We All Our God” when it isn’t easy to do so?

When I looked for a recording of “Now Thank We All Our God” to include here, I found something that struck me as revealing. Most of the contemporary recorded versions I found on-line are set against a backdrop of beautiful scenes from nature, lush hillsides, majestic skies. I wanted one in an actual church with an actual congregation. Not many of those, though here is one from First Plymouth UCC in Lincoln, Nebraska.

The problem with taking this hymn out of the church context and letting it be the soundtrack for scenes of beautiful mountains in autumn, a radiant ocean, or a laden Thanksgiving table surrounded by laughing people (like a wine or beer commercial) is that it suggests faith is a benediction for our version of the good life. But what happens when life isn’t so good, when life is hard?

In the church there is a cross at the front. The message of the cross is that God knows about, and is known, not just in good times, but in the midst of suffering and death. The message of the cross is that in times of fear and loss, God can be trusted.

Can God be trusted in times like ours? “Now Thanks We All Our God,” (emphasis on the “now”) is Martin Rinkart’s answer and that of the church through the ages. “Yes, God can be trusted in the darkest of times, at the times of unspeakable loss.” There is a cross at the center of our faith, not a video of a beautiful sunset or glistening harvest field.

Rinkart’s lyrics originally served as a table blessing. You might consider them as a blessing/ prayer for your Thanksgiving table.

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 mother’s 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 still in 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.

Faith is confessed, sung and asserted not because everything is just hunky-dory, but precisely because it isn’t. Faith is sung and declared, not because of the supporting evidence for it — but, at least sometimes — in spite of evidence to the contrary. Beneath the cross of Christ, we sing our trust in the face of loss and uncertainty. And as we do, we find ourselves strengthened in the present and for the future.

May it be so for you as you read, pray or sing these words.