I’m almost done writing the first draft of my next book. My first two books in this series about the stories behind hymns were focused on hymns on a particular theme. My first book was a small book about the stories of 31 hymns that were based on the Psalms. My second book had 51 stories about hymns based on the theme of peace and comfort.
My current book is about seasonal hymns – the stories behind hymns written to celebrate the seasons of the church year from Advent and Christmas, through Easter and Pentecost, and ending with Christ the King Sunday. I’m also including hymns written to celebrate national holidays, like Thanksgiving. Of the 120 hymn stories in this book, I just finished drafting the story of the 114th hymn, “Now Thank We All Our God.”
The pandemic has provided me an atmosphere that’s very conducive to writing. If I’m supposed to stay at home and avoid seeing people I don’t live with, sitting at my computer to research the history of hymns is the perfect thing to do. I started writing this book in March. I’ll admit, it was a little hard to focus on Advent hymns during Lent, and Lenten hymns during the beautiful sunny days of summer. I’m finally caught up, and am now in sync. I’m writing about Thanksgiving hymns just in time for Thanksgiving.
Which leads me into why I’m writing this blog post today. Not only is “Now Thank We All Our God” a hymn of thankfulness that is appropriate for this time of year, the hymn was written in 1636, during the peak of the plague that spread throughout Europe – a time we can somewhat identify with this year, the year of our own pandemic. Because the parallels between 1636 and 2020 are so notable, I decided to share the story on my blog.
“NOW THANK WE ALL OUR GOD”
I’m writing this on Sunday, November 15, 2020, less than two weeks before Thanksgiving. This is the year of the Corona Virus, COVID-19. Public Health officials are urging us to stay home for Thanksgiving – to NOT gather with friends and family. The risk of spreading the virus is too great. It’s easy to feel disappointed or depressed by the havoc the virus has wreaked on our country and the whole world this year. This Thanksgiving is not a time that many of us are inclined to feel very thankful.
Almost 400 years ago, the world was in a similar predicament. The Thirty Years War was raging and the plague was spreading throughout Europe. In 1636 Martin Rinkart, a Lutheran pastor in the walled city of Eilenburg, Germany, wrote the hymn, “Now Thank We All Our God.” Throughout the Thirty Years War, Eilenburg, as a walled city, was flooded with refugees seeking safety. That resulted in overcrowding, widespread hunger, and disease. Also, the city was sacked three times during the war, once by the Austrian Army and twice by the Swedish Army.
By the mid 1630s, Rinkart was the only pastor still alive in the city, and he was left with the task of officiating at the funerals of everyone who died – sometimes as many as 50 funerals in a day. One was for his wife.
Despite this horrible situation, Rinkart regularly invited refugees into his home for meals, even though he barely had enough food for his own family. He wrote “Now Thank We All Our God” as a prayer to be sung before a meal. The first verse expresses gratitude to God for his “countless gifts of love.” The second verse is a petition for God’s continued care. The last verse praises God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – “the one eternal God.”
During his ministry, Rinkart wrote 65 other hymns, but this is the one that is still in wide use. Even today it is one of the most frequently sung hymns in German churches.
In the 1850s, Catherine Winkworth, an English hymn writer and educator traveled in Germany and became very interested in German hymns. She selected about 400 German hymns, translated them into English, and published four hymn books of German hymns in English. She is the person who brought “Now Thank We All Our God” to the English-speaking world.
This year may be the perfect year to sing or read “Now Thank We All Our God” before we eat our Thanksgiving dinner, just as the author intended it to be sung – as a prayer before a meal.
Now thank we all our God with hearts and hands and voices,
who wondrous things has done, in whom this world rejoices;
who, from our mothers’ arms, has blest us on our way
with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
Oh, may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
with ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us,
and keep us all in grace, and guide us when perplexed,
and free us from all harm in this world and the next.
All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given,
the Son, and Spirit blest, who reign in highest heaven,
and one eternal God, whom earth and heaven adore;
for thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.
Almost every day for at least the last ten years, I’ve started my morning in the comfortable sitting area of my downstairs office. I light the seasonal arrangement of candles on the coffee table, and settle into my Lazy Boy recliner. I spend from ten minutes to an hour quietly beginning the day.
Today, November 14, would have been my sister Nancy’s 82nd birthday. She died eleven years ago, just a few days after her 71st birthday. (My age now.) I was alone at our Christmas Mountain timeshare when she died unexpectedly. Mim called me with the shocking and sad news. I spent the rest of my retreat time at Christmas Mountain that week paging through a hymnal and playing all of Nancy’s favorite hymns on my portable keyboard.
Ken Medema, the composer of “Lord, Listen to Your Children Praying,” invited conference attendees to tell him a story of a recent challenge they have encountered, and he would create a song about it on the spot and sing it back to us. He composed about half a dozen new songs during his hour-long session. Wow! How inspiring!
Monday of this week seemed really strange. It was the first day of the next phase in our lives. The day before, Anna, our last long-term assisted living resident, moved on to her next life. She had lived with us for eight years, and had just celebrated her 98th birthday a couple weeks ago. She died peacefully last Sunday with Mim holding her hand.
We’ve been in the assisted living phase of our lives for 16 years and 5 months. During that time we’ve had a total of only 10 days without having a resident to care for in our home, and those days were all in the first few months of the business, 16 years ago. Fortunately, we have always had two or three excellent caregivers to give us a few hours off each week, and even an occasional night or two away. But even during our time away, Mim has always been on call as the nursing expert.
We had good preparation for the assisted living phase of our lives by caring for our parents. In 1987, we cared for my mom for the last six weeks of her life. She and my dad came to Chicago to live with us while we cared for her. A few years later, in 1991, Mim and I took some time off from our work in Chicago to come to Cambridge to care for my dad throughout the last couple weeks of his life. And finally, in 1993, a few month’s after we moved to Wisconsin, Mim’s mother had a stroke that left her paralyzed on her left side. We cared for her in our home for almost five years.
On February 23 we celebrated Anna’s 98th birthday. Anna has been living with us as an assisted living resident for eight years now. Some of her family members came for a little party, and everyone, especially Anna, had a really good time.
A natural storyteller, Dominic Grassi invites readers to share his warm memories of life in Chicago over the past five decades. He shows how God is reflected in the people we meet every day: a butcher, a bookstore owner, a short-order cook.
“I remember, Mom, in January of 2015, shortly after you adopted me, you explained “special words” to me, and as a young pup of less than a year old, I chose my first special word – LEARN, because I was going to concentrate on learning all I could to become the best companion to our residents that I could be. Remember, Mom?”
I’ve been working on my next book of reflections on hymns, and just completed the story behind “O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee.” The writing of this hymn was prompted by the social and economic conditions in the United States following the Civil War. As I was explaining the context of this hymn to Mim, she said, “That sounds just like the social, economic, and political situation today. You should blog about it.” So here’s a peek at one reflection that will be in my next book.
