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NOW THANK WE ALL
OUR GOD
(Nun
danket alle Gott)
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,
the one
eternal God, whom earth and heav'n adore;
for thus it
was, is now, and shall be evermore.
Text: Martin
Rinkhart, 1586-1649; tr. Catherine Winkworth, 1827-1878
My first exposure
to this hymn of thanksgiving came when I read the account of a
family of German immigrants who arrived in the United States
shortly after the Civil War. The account was written in 1925 by a
woman who had made the journey as a 7-year- old girl. The crossing
was stormy and lasted seven weeks. When the ship reached America,
the girl’s mother read a scripture, and then they all sang “Nun
danket alle Gott.”
The hymn had been
written by Martin Rinkhart, a Lutheran pastor in Eilenburg,
Saxony, during the Thirty Years War in the 1600s. The town had
been under siege. Starvation and the plague were rampant. People
fought in the streets over a dead rat! Pastor Rinkhart buried more
than 4,000 people.
When peace
finally began to dawn on Germany, he wrote the words to this hymn,
expressing his gratitude to God. The Peace of Westphalia, a
collection of treaties, finally ended the war in 1648. Pastor
Rinkhart died in 1649, having served his parish for 31 years.
When we think of
the hardships that lay ahead of the immigrant family and the
problems that faced Pastor Rinkhart and his parish at the end of a
terrible war, we can only wonder that they could still thank God
for his blessings. How can we, who have been even more blessed,
fail to be even more grateful for the blessings he has showered on
us?
Heavenly Father,
as we sing this wonderful hymn of thanksgiving, help us to
appreciate all the blessings you have bestowed on us. We ask this
in the name of your son, Jesus Christ.
Leslie Riggle
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