A Time for Thanksgiving

“Pastor Martin?”

A slightly anxious voice quickly followed an equally anxious knock on my study door. Weary, I lifted my head out of my hands and looked toward the doorway from what was my only real place of refuge from the tumult of cares outside. Somehow, those cares always managed to seep into my study nonetheless.

“Yes, Johannes, come in,” I reluctantly replied to my assistant’s query.

Johannes, a young man of twenty, opened the door and hesitantly entered the room. Though the light from the fire in my hearth was dim, I could still make out the exhaustion in Johannes’ face. It was an expression I knew I wore myself, though it seemed Johannes still bore the remains of youthful exuberance. Any trace of youth had left my features ages ago.

“What is it, Johannes?” I said, mildly annoyed, to my assistant.

“I’m sorry, Pastor Martin,” Johannes stammered. “I know that this is the time of day you particularly ask not to be disturbed, but a courier from the mayor was just here and delivered this.” Johannes extended a missive in my direction. I could see the Eilenberg seal, with the mayor’s initials on the outside.

“I see,” I muttered, somewhat gruffly. “No, don’t be sorry, my son. The mayor’s messages ought to be delivered immediately, despite my preference for peace at this hour.” I smiled at the lad—indeed, it was hard not to think of him as a lad. He had been but an infant when I first became pastor in Eilenberg; but he was a child no longer. “I will read the mayor’s letter, Johannes, but unless the matter is of the utmost urgency, I do not believe I will send a reply until the morning. You may retire to your room for the evening. I’ll rouse you should I need your assistance.”

Johannes showed the slightest look of relief, nodded, and then turned to leave. But before taking a step, he turned once more towards me. “Are you alright, Pastor Martin?” As soon as the question became audible Johannes tried to clarify what he realized, considering the circumstances, might have been a foolish question. “What I meant, sir, is that, well, you seem especially tired this evening. Were the visits particularly difficult today?”

Once again, I couldn’t help smiling at the lad, this time, out of gratitude for his loyal concern. No, it was true, in one sense, I wasn’t alright. Of the twenty years I had spent ministering as pastor in my hometown of Eilenberg, 19 of them had been during wartime. And I was exhausted in every sense of the word.  The conflict between the armies of His Imperial Majesty and the armies of the Lutheran princes who opposed him had turned Germany into a hellish tromping ground for soldiers from all over Europe. And it had turned Eilenberg into a refuge for the countless families whose lives had been turned upside down by the chaos of civil war.

Becoming the pastor at Eilenberg had been a life-long dream of mine. This was my home. It was my greatest joy to become the shepherd of those who were so dear to me. But my ministry became something I had never anticipated. Instead of serving familiar friends and family, I had spent almost two decades caring for strangers, precious souls who had experienced unspeakable horrors, many now penniless, homeless, and friendless in this world. Eilenberg had been inundated with these refugees, sparking an economic crisis that the city’s leadership was constantly trying to manage.  Things hadn’t been helped by this year’s outbreak of the plague.  And that, no doubt, was the reason for the mayor’s letter I now held in my hands.

“I’m, alright, Johannes. Just tired, as you said,” I tried to say with a tone a reassurance. “Now quickly, off you go, sir. Peace be with you.”

“And with you, Pastor Martin.” Johannes looked at me sadly for a brief moment, and then turned and quietly left the room.

I sighed again as I turned the mayor’s letter over and broke the seal. In a few lines I grasped the gravity of the message. The mayor had been informed that the Swedish army was approaching Eilenberg. Sweden had intervened in our conflict on the side of the Lutheran states, but as so often was the case, sides meant nothing when money was in short order. The mayor had obtained intelligence that the army approaching was seeking tribute, something the city coffers could hardly bear to pay. The mayor was requesting that I be part of a delegation he was formulating to send the day after tomorrow to negotiate with the Swedes.

I set the letter on my desk and sank back into my chair, running my hand over my hoary head. I groaned inwardly with indignation. Who were these foreign mercenaries, to rob and pillage a city in territory they supposedly supported? Was it anything to them the severity of the situation for Eilenberg, or for the thousands of innocents who depended on us for their very survival? Was it anything to them that we were burying the plague’s victims as quickly as the war was sending them to us?

But my indignation quickly passed. What else could we do but try to persuade these soldiers to show mercy? We had no other options. And perhaps the miserable conditions of the town themselves would be enough proof to these Scandinavians that we weren’t bluffing. Yes, perhaps I could convince their general to walk the streets with me, to visit our burial grounds, to attend one of the 40 funerals I would conduct in the next few days, to understand that of any city in the Holy Roman Empire, Eilenberg was bereft of anything in the way of worldly goods.

“Dear God,” I uttered painfully, “help us.”

 It was hard for me to believe my prayer. Would God help us? And not just with this problem of payment to martial marauders. Would He care to help us with the plague? With the interminable war? With the vanishing food?  With my own family’s fight for survival?

I opened my eyes and stared sullenly at my desk.  After a moment or two of gloomy silence, I reached for my Bible from where I had set it down but an hour before upon my return. I had carried it today on my visitations, reading its comfort to the sick. I had preached its eternal truths at the gravesides of the day’s dozen casualties of the plague. Today, up until now, I had been reading these words for others. But now I read them for myself.

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.”  I stopped, and pondered these words, living words from the forty-sixth Psalm.  A refuge was a place of safety in the midst of peril, I thought. It was not the absence of the peril, but a means for enduring it.  

“The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.” There it was again, refuge. I thought of how our walled city was a haven for so many . In the same way, I mused, God was the Haven for the weary, troubled soul, my soul, struggling with doubts, with fears, with grief. In the midst of my perils, He was my help.

“He maketh wars to cease…Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”

I set my Bible down. “Lord,” I pleaded, “may it be so even today! As for tomorrow, may I be still and know, that whatever it may bring, you still are God and that one day you will be exalted in the earth. For now, I thank you that you are my refuge, and that despite all the ills around me,  your grace will sustain me in the work that you have called me to do, even in this great darkness.”

I sighed once again, this time, with some relief. I glanced at a stack of papers sitting on the corner of my desk. On the top was a single page with the beginnings of a hymn I had begun writing many months before. I had intended it for my children to sing at our supper table, but in the harried busyness of life, I had never quite finished it. “Now thank we all our God,” the first line began.

“Well, I believe the reply to the mayor may wait,” I said as I pulled the parchment from the stack and lay it in front of me. I took a quill from a small box, dipped it in the inkwell, and began editing the stanzas I’d written so many months before, while adding a new one.

“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 in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;

And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!”

Setting the quill down, I smiled. Perhaps the Swedish general would like a copy of my new table prayer. “After all,” I said wryly, “a song is about as good a tribute as we can muster.” 

Martin Rinkart (1586-1649) served as the sole surviving pastor in the town of Eilenberg in Saxony, Germany during the Thirty Years War. He ministered to the thousands of refugees who came to Eilenberg, conducted countless funerals after the outbreak of the plague in 1637 (including his own wife’s), and negotiated with the Swedish Army on the city’s behalf in 1637 and 1639. He wrote the now famous Thanksgiving hymn, “Now Thank We All Our God”, around 1636. You can read more about Rinkart’s remarkable life and ministry here.