A Hymn of Thanks from the Valley of Death

In 1637, the Saxon town of Eilenburg was a place of unrelenting grief. The Thirty Years' War had driven refugees behind its walls, and plague followed close behind. Pastor Martin Rinkart buried over four thousand of his parishioners that year alone — sometimes forty or fifty in a single day. Among them was his own wife, Katherine.

Yet from that valley of relentless sorrow, Rinkart penned the words that would become one of Christianity's greatest hymns of gratitude: Now Thank We All Our God, with Hearts and Hands and Voices. Not a hymn written from comfort, but from a man standing knee-deep in loss, choosing to open the gates of thanksgiving anyway.

This is exactly the spirit of Psalm 118. The psalmist does not give thanks because circumstances are easy. He has been pushed hard, surrounded, pressed on every side. Yet he declares, "This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." His thanksgiving is not naive optimism — it is a deliberate, defiant act of faith rooted in one unshakeable truth: the steadfast love of the Almighty endures forever.

Rinkart understood what every pastor eventually learns — that the deepest gratitude is not born in seasons of abundance but forged in seasons of suffering, where nothing remains to trust except the enduring goodness of God.