Far more often than we realize, the world has experienced terrible plagues. Most famous, of course, were the plagues that God sent on Egypt to force Pharaoh to set His people free. Scripture records other instances in which great hardship, and even death, came on people. Some of these were local and temporary. Others were widespread and long-lasting. Think of the locusts that destroyed food, or the droughts that decimated crops, or even the flood in Noah’s day. And we have not even mentioned the countless deaths resulting from the ravages of war, not only on military combatants, but also on civilians.
Where was God in these? The same place He has always been: seated on His throne. That means He is sovereignly in control of every blessing and every calamity that we experience. On a number of occasions, the Scripture even identifies God as the one who has sent these devastations to accomplish His purpose. Of course, ultimately, every pain and sorrow and will in the word has come as a result of the sin of mankind, beginning with Adam’s disobedience in the garden of Eden. Romans 5:12-21 traces the theology of the fall.
The book of Job is very helpful here. God did not cause Job’s losses, Satan did. But everything that happened to Job occurred by God’s permission and for God’s purposes. God never explained His reasons to Job (or to us), but rather called on him (and us) to trust that He knows what He’s doing. That’s as much true of plagues as it is of storms, or famines as it is of persecutions. We need to remind ourselves of this so that we can say with Jeremiah in Lamentations 3, even if the city is destroyed, “Great is Thy faithfulness.”
Watching the news of the dangers, growth, and spread of the Coronavirus in 2020 gave new meaning to the petition in the special Litany prayer that many recognize, asking God to protect us from “pestilence and famine.” With millions infected and hundreds of thousands succumbing in death to COVID-19, we rightly cry out to God for His mercy, even as we seek vaccines and try to remain safe with masks and social distancing.
Pestilence was nothing new hundreds of years ago. 1637 was a particularly difficult year for Martin Rinkart (1586-1649) and the people of the town of Eilenburg in Germany. He began to serve as a pastor in the town in 1617. The next year a war began which lasted for three decades and is remembered in history as the Thirty Years’ War. During the war many thousands of people sought refuge within the walls of the city. In 1637 a severe plague hit the city as another wave of infections from the “Black Death” (the bubonic plague) broke out, and by the end of the year around 8,480 people had lost their lives. Among them was his own wife, who passed away on May 8 of that year. By August he was the only pastor serving in the city and was sometimes presiding over funerals for as many as 40-50 people at a time. It’s hard to imagine the anguish and fear of people across Germany during those dark days.
It was in the midst of this war, the pestilence and the famine that resulted, that Rinkart wrote the words of the famous hymn Now Thank We All Our God. It was published in a devotional book where it was entitled “A Little Prayer Before Meals.” Upon the loss of his wife in the next year, the reference to mothers in the first verse must have meant even more to him and his children as they sang it around their table before a meal. Today, we most often appropriately sing the hymn at Thanksgiving. But it takes on a much richer and more powerful effect when we connect it to its original setting amid the tragedies and suffering and tragedies of those days.
Below is a literal translation of the hymn from the original German. Even in midst of calamity and tragedy, Rinkart heeded the apostle Paul’s admonition to give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
In stanza 1 we turn from our present troubles to focus on the God who rules over us; We need to remind ourselves of His many great mercies to us over the years, even form the time were in our mother’s wombs, and His promise to continue to meet all our needs, never leaving us or forsaking us.
Now let us all thank God with hearts, mouths, and hands,
who does great things for us and all the ends of the earth.
Who, while we were yet in our mother’s womb and from childhood on,
has greatly blessed us and does so to this day.
Stanza 2 is usually placed as the final stanza in our hymnals today. It is, in effect, a trinitarian Gloria Patri, a very fitting conclusion to the text.It reminds us that while we are struggling here, He is reigning above from heaven’s throne. And He will continue to exercise His sovereignty into all eternity.
Glory, honor, and praise be to God, to the Father and to the Son
and to the One who is equal to both upon heaven’s throne on high –
to the triune God, as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be now and forevermore.
Stanza 3, usually sung as stanza 2, is filled with confidence in God that can even be characterized as joy while our troubles continue. His grace will ultimately deliver us from all the sorrows of this life into the glory of eternal joy in His presence.
The eternal and bountiful God willingly grants us during our life
an ever-cheerful heart and noble peace
and holds us in His grace continually
and delivers us from all affliction no matter where we are.
The music was written for this hymn text by Johann Crüger in 1647, just 11 years after Pastor Rinkart wrote the lyrics. He was born in 1598 in Prussia, which was then a part of Germany. After studying theology at the University of Wittenberg, he moved to Berlin in 1615, where he published music for the rest of his life, including many hymns which continue in use today. Seven of his compositions are found in the Trinity Hymnal. In 1622 he became the Lutheran cantor at St. Nicholas Church. His publication, Praxis Pietatis Melica (1644), is considered one of the most important collections of German hymnody in the seventeenth century. It was reprinted forty-four times in the following hundred years. As is typical with Lutheran chorales, the name of the tune is the opening line of the hymn in the original German: NUN DANKET ALLE GOTT.