Martin Rinckart was a pastor and musician in the German city of Eilenburg during the Thirty Years’ War, which ran from 1618 to 1648. War, famine, and plague filled the town with refugees. As one of the last ministers left alive in the city, Rinckart stretched his own resources to care for people, and at the height of the plague he was conducting nearly fifty funerals a day. Out of that season came the hymn we still sing every Thanksgiving: “Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices.” In its 1663 printing it was titled “A little table prayer,” which suggests it was meant to be sung as grace before a meal. Picture that. A worn-out preacher, scraps on the table, funerals all day, and he sits down and sings about countless gifts of love. Gratitude doesn’t wait for good times. It’s how faith talks in hard ones.
