Luther's Mighty Fortress in a Crumbling World

In 1529, Martin Luther sat in a cold room in Wittenberg while the Ottoman army marched toward Vienna, the bubonic plague crept through German villages, and the Roman church had declared him a heretic worthy of death. His friend and fellow reformer Friedrich Myconius lay gravely ill. Political alliances that once protected Luther were fracturing. By every earthly measure, the ground beneath him was giving way.

Yet Luther opened the Psalter to Psalm 46 and began to write. The hymn that poured out — A Mighty Fortress Is Our God — did not minimize the danger. "Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing," he wrote honestly. But Luther had watched the Almighty work at the break of day before. He had stood before emperors and councils, and God had not let him fall.

What strikes pastors and historians alike is the specificity of Luther's confidence. He was not speaking in abstractions. The mountains were literally quaking — armies advancing, disease spreading, friends dying. And still he wrote of a God who makes wars cease, who breaks the bow and shatters the spear.

Psalm 46 is not a psalm for calm days. It was written for the moments when the waters roar and foam, when kingdoms totter and the earth melts. And it declares that even there — especially there — the Most High dwells with His people, an ever-present help in trouble.