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STORIES BEHIND THE HYMNS

We are all tired of Covid 19, aren’t we? And, I dare say, we feel that this misery has dragged on for long enough. Well, let me take you back just over four hundred years...

The Thirty Years’ War took place in Central Europe from 1618-1648, and to begin with was a religious war. The newly elected Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand, sought to impose strict Roman Catholic beliefs on all his domains, but the Protestant nobles of Bohemia and Austria objected. As the war became more and more political, it seemed that no one was prepared to back down, and so the conflict raged on, bringing untold misery to all concerned.

It was at the start of the war, that a Lutheran pastor was appointed to minister to the city of Eilenberg in Saxony, Germany. His name was Martin Rinker (1586-1649), the son of a poor cooper. Martin had been a chorister in Leipzig before entering the university there. He then became an ordained minister and, at the age of 32, returned to his home town as pastor. Because Eilenberg was a walled city, it became a magnet for refugees from the conflict which from the very start was savage and bloody.

Throughout the years that were to follow, waves of pestilence and famine ravaged the city and Martin Rinkart opened his home to many despite having barely enough food to feed his own family. The plague of 1637 was particularly vicious. Martin was 51 by then and had suffered all this hardship for almost 20 years; he was now the only remaining minister and was called upon to conduct 40 or 50 funerals a day. And yet, he found the time and the strength to write 67 hymns as well as other dramatic productions.

The hymn “Now Thank We All Our God” was based on Roman 8, verses 35 and 37: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ. Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.”

1. Now thank we all our God, 2. O may this bounteous God

With hearts and hands and voices; Through all our life be near us,

Who wondrous things has done, With ever joyful hearts

In whom His world rejoices; And blessed peace to cheer us;

Who from our mother’s arms And keep us in His grace,

Has blessed us on our way And guide us when perplexed,

With countless gifts of love, And free us from all ills

And still is ours today. In this world and the next.

3. 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 ever more.

Muriel M. Jenkins