A Thanksgiving Thought

One of my favorite childhood memories of Thanksgiving in our little Lutheran Church in Big Bend Wisconsin was singing Martin Rinkert’s Hymn, “Now Thank We All Our God”. I’m not sure many today are familiar with this classic, in fact I’m not sure that many churches even have a service on Thanksgiving Day. It’s a lot easier to hold the worship service on Wednesday evening or just skip it all together!

I get it, but I still miss the Thanksgiving Day service and all the Thanksgiving Hymns and Scripture readings, and then coming home to the smell of turkey cooking in the oven!  Another problem with skipping the Thanksgiving Day service is we get so busy with food preparation and serving it while it’s hot and then making sure we don’t miss one down of football….that the giving thanks to God part gets cast aside for other things.

Well, enough of the editorializing, the main reason I’m writing this is to remind you and I that we have much to be thankful to God for, and I want to use the backdrop of the Rinkert hymn to perhaps jar us into that reality.

Martin Rinkart was a Lutheran minister who came to Eilenburg, Saxony at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War. The walled city of Eilenburg became the refuge for political and military fugitives, but the result was overcrowding, and deadly pestilence and famine. Armies overran it three times. The Rinkart home was a refuge for the victims, even though he was often hard-pressed to provide for his own family. During the height of a severe plague in 1637, Rinkart was the only surviving pastor in Eilenburg, conducting as many as 50 funerals in a day. He performed more than 4000 funerals in that year, including that of his wife.

Let that sink in as you munch on your Thanksgiving snacks in your recliner this afternoon. “Deadly pestilence a constant companion, a lack of food, foreign soldiers occupying your city, 50 funerals a day, 4000 in one year, including the death of his spouse! In spite of all this, he was able to pen the words to this hymn:

Now thank we all our God,
with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done,
in Whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers’ arms
has 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 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 Heaven adore;
For thus it was, is now,
and shall be evermore.

Yes we have MUCH to be thankful for. Take the time to count your blessings today and give thanks to the giver of all gifts! Jas 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.

Happy Thanksgiving!