All Praise and Thanks to God

Pastor Gary Oser

As I write these words, it is looking like Thanksgiving plans for this year may be different due to the covid virus. This brought to mind a great Thanksgiving hymn; it may be one I have shared with you about it before, but it would be appropriate to remind you of it again. The hymn is titled, “Now Thank We All Our God.”

The situation in which this hymn was written was much more severe than anything we will experience with covid this year. The song was written by a German pastor during the Thirty Years War.

Martin Rinkhart was the only pastor in the walled German city of Eilenberg. Many refugees fled there hoping the walls would protect them. However, the city was overrun by Swedes, Austrians and Swedes again.

Because of the crowded conditions, hunger and sickness (including the plague)were constant problems. In one year, 1637, Rinkhart conducted 5,000 funerals including that of his wife. He had every reason to grumble and complain about his lot in life. Instead, he wrote a great Thanksgiving hymn.

The first verse is a general expression of gratitude to God in the midst of hardships. The second is a petition for God’s continuing keeping and care. The last is a great doxology of praise. You might like to use the words as your expression of thanksgiving this year.

“Now thank you we all our God with hearts and hands and voices / Who wondrous things hath done, in whom His world rejoices; / Who from our mother’s arms hath blessed us on our way / With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

O may this bounteous God thru 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.”