Thanksgiving

November 28, 2019

Today is a day of national thanksgiving, a tradition that began with our nation’s birth and the signing of the peace treaty ending our Revolutionary War. It was George Washington himself who declared the third Thursday of November to be a day of national giving of thanks to, as he put it, “that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be” for the conclusion of the war and the formation of a new government. (See https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/george-washingtons-thanksgiving-proclamation-what-different-era). We would be hard pressed to imagine such a proclamation being made in today’s climate of politically-correct scrubbing of any vestiges of Christianity. Things were different not so long ago. 

For many, it’s a day of feasting and football, an edible prelude to the gluttony of Black Friday shopping. Facebook will be filled with photos of overloaded tables groaning with turkey, potatoes, stuffing, squash, and pie. Many who sit around those tables will be groaning later in the evening as the enormity of the day’s consumption takes hold. Sadly, tomorrow many of us will promptly forget the gratitude and get back to our normal grousing and crabbing about all that irritates us. In that vein, I think it would be good to remember one of the classic hymns of thanksgiving and the circumstances in which it was written.

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. (Wikipedia). This was hardly the likely soil for one of history’s greatest hymns of thanksgiving, but Rinkart was not only a pastor, but a poet and musician as well, penning this verse in the midst of the plague. We don’t live in constant fear of starvation, the plague, and invading armies, and are already quite a bit more fortunate than he, so why is gratitude so hard to conjure up? May these powerful words be an inspiration to us all on this Thanksgiving and on each subsequent day we draw breath.

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 still in 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.