Who are you thanking?

Listen. Watch. The Lincoln Minster School Choir makes it clear (2:26).

The song “Now Thank We All Our God” (a translation from the German “Nun danket alle Gott”) is a Christian hymn that was written circa 1636 by Lutheran pastor Martin Rinkart (1586–1649) in Eilenberg, Saxony, Germany. It was translated into English in the 19th Century by Catherine Winkworth.

Martin Rinkart came to Eilenburg, Saxony at the beginning of the Thirty Years War. The walled city 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 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 of four who had served Eilenberg, and he conducted as many as 50 funerals in a day. He performed more than 4000 funerals in that year, including that of his wife.

Still he could write:

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 blessèd 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.

In tough economic times, in times of political unrest and terroristic threats, in war, famine, pestilence, and even the face of death, can we do less?

[Editor's note. Just for the record, I wrote this post a day or two before this presidential faux pas occurred. President Obama should have been reading my blog. -- RWP, Nov. 26, 2011]