Luther's Hymn from the Ruins

In 1527, plague swept through Wittenberg. Martin Luther refused to flee. Friends died. His infant son fell gravely ill. His own body burned with fever and despair so crushing he later described it as spiritual assault — the feeling that God Himself had turned away. The earth, it seemed, was giving way beneath his feet.

Yet somewhere in that crucible, Luther opened his Psalter to Psalm 46 and began to write. The words that emerged were not the polished phrases of a comfortable scholar. They were forged in genuine terror: Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott — "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." Every line answered a real fear. Mountains were falling. Waters were roaring. And Luther wrote back to the chaos with the conviction that the God who dwells within His city cannot be moved.

What makes this remarkable is the timing. Luther did not write his most famous hymn in victory. He wrote it when kingdoms were shaking around him — political threats from Rome, disease in his household, darkness in his own mind. He wrote it at break of day, trusting that El Shaddai, the Almighty, would help when morning came.

Psalm 46 does not promise the absence of catastrophe. It promises the presence of God within it. Luther staked his life on that difference — and four centuries later, his hymn still steadies trembling congregations when their own mountains begin to fall.