The Grandfather's Table Grace

In 1987, Harold Müller sat at his kitchen table in Leipzig, East Germany, and gave thanks over a meal of bread and thin cabbage soup. His wife had died two years earlier. The Stasi had confiscated his pastoral library. His son had not spoken to him in a decade. Yet every evening, Harold bowed his head and repeated the same words from 1 Chronicles 16:34: "Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever."

His granddaughter, Katrin, then twelve, once asked him why he thanked God when so little seemed worth thanking Him for. Harold set down his spoon and said, "Katrin, I am not thanking God for my circumstances. I am thanking God for His character. Circumstances rotate like seasons. His goodness does not."

When David sang these words in 1 Chronicles 16, he was not living in ease. He had been hunted, betrayed, and exiled for years. But as the ark finally entered Jerusalem, David did not celebrate his own survival. He celebrated the unchanging faithfulness of the Almighty — a goodness that preceded David's troubles and would outlast them all.

Harold Müller died in 1993, four years after the Berlin Wall fell. Katrin, now a pastor herself in Dresden, begins every Sunday service the same way her grandfather began every meal — not with a summary of the week's blessings, but with an ancient declaration that God's love endures forever, regardless of what the week has held.