Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t love it above all others. I don’t fully know why, either. It was such a favorite that I convinced Ben to get married on Thanksgiving weekend and for 22 years thereafter the holiday had extra reasons to be celebrated.
This has been the first year I ever remember that I haven’t looked forward to the feast of gratitude. I was looking at myself from the outside trying to figure out why I was so blasé about the holiday, and I’ll admit that I found a lot to be more depressed about than grateful: a rift in my birth family, the death of one of my dearest friends, isolation now that Elizabeth is away, some hurtful rejections, everything compounded by a difficult reaction to my Covid booster/flu shot combination last Monday causing me to be quite ill the very week of Thanksgiving – forcing me to miss my friend’s funeral, and other recent struggles made this Thanksgiving seem more of a chore and a trial than a time of thankfulness.
Amongst all these trials, however, even I recognized in my self-pity that there is much to be so grateful for. The family rift is allowing me to really discover my own self; my friend is finally out of her long-endured pain; my isolation and rejections are making me grow and expand in many ways; the vaccine reaction showed me just how kind and generous people are as they took care of me and brought foods to help my Thanksgiving prep be easier; and my other struggles are just a part of life, helping me empathize with others better.
I am a firm believer that trials can make or break us. Even in breaking us, however, they can make us stronger as we heal and recover. I had an ornament that kept falling apart yesterday as I attempted to decorate for Christmas, causing damage everywhere it fell. It was aggravating to an extreme. I then took the two pieces that have never been firm, used super glue, and they aren’t breaking ever again. They are much stronger than before.
Maybe that isn’t the best analogy, but I think you get my point.
In addition to the belief that whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, I also believe that some of the richest blessings come from the soil of sorrow and despair. Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol at a low point in his career; Handel composed Messiah at a time when he had just suffered a massive failure and was dealing with severe depression; Beethoven’s glorious Ninth Symphony (amongst other works) was written after he had completely lost his hearing; etc.
So it was with one of our greatest hymns of thanksgiving, Now Thank We All Our God. This hymn was written in 1636 by Martin Rinkart, a Lutheran archdeacon serving during the Thirty Years War.
For those not familiar with that particular war, let’s just sum it up by saying it was one of the costliest in Europe, with more than 8 million people losing their lives. What began as a war over religious liberty (perhaps not exactly liberty by our standards, but by early Reformation standards it was exactly that) ultimately became a war for political domination over the European continent. In the midst of those thirty wars, as if bloody warfare wasn’t enough, there was a widespread famine and even a typhus epidemic – both of which killed vast numbers of people.
Anyway, Rinkart was serving in the walled city of Eilenburg, Germany, whose walled defenses became a haven of choice for political refugees fleeing the ravages of war not fought under the constraints of the Geneva Convention. This flood of refugees led to the twin disasters of overcrowding: starvation and disease. The city was also thrice sieged by the Swedish army, leading to greater starvation and health crises among the populace. By 1637 Rinkart was the only surviving clergyman in the city. At the height of the unfolding war-caused disaster he was performing up to 50 burial services daily. One of those services was for his own wife.
Despite all these horrors, however, Rinkart during these years wrote 66 hymns, including this one:
Now thank we all our God
With hearts and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things hath done,
In whom his earth rejoices;
Who, from our mothers’ arms,
Hath blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love
And still is ours today.Oh, may our bounteous God
Through all our life be near us,
With ever-joyful hearts
And blessed 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
Martin Rinkart, trans. by Catherine Winkworth
The Father now be given,
The Son and Spirit blest,
Who reign in highest heaven
The one eternal God,
Whom heaven and earth adore;
For thus it was, is now,
And shall be evermore.
What absolutely gorgeous words! I cannot imagine writing such lyrics in the middle of a crisis of unfathomable dimensions. But if one can find reason to thank God in those circumstances, then it stands to reason that we can find reason to thank Him in our less-harrowing, though still painful, circumstances.
I think it is so perfect that Thanksgiving leads into the Christmas season. Trailing clouds of gratitude (sorry, Wordsworth) is exactly the way to prepare us to celebrate the birth of Him who has given us all things. How fitting that we hear at Christmas, “But thanks, thanks, thanks be to God!”
No matter what: no matter how dark, no matter how difficult, no matter how frightening life may be, there is always an abundance of reason to give thanks to God. And if we can’t find the reasons at the moment, it is comforting to know that out of adversity comes greater blessings – even if those blessings are in the future. Trials prepare the soil of our lives to be able to receive the moisture of inspiration and blessings that can only flow from God.
So, to echo Martin Rinkhart nearly four hundred years after he penned his beautiful words, “Now thank we all our God!”
Look to God and Live... Joyfully! 