Hope

by Josie Smith.

I have always valued the hymn ‘Now thank we all our God’, and when I was an active preacher I used it frequently as the final hymn in acts of worship. Gratitude is something I feel every day (just for still being alive, for one thing!) but it is only recently that it occurred to me what sickeningly familiar circumstances this hymn arose from.

The author was a pastor in a town on land contested by warring nations.  Refugees from the surrounding countryside, rendered homeless, had moved within the town walls ‘for safety’ as first one army, then the other, gained the upper hand.   Farms were abandoned, crops ruined, food became scarce, prices rose, people were constantly hungry, and overcrowding led to infections spreading throughout the population.   Increasing numbers of people simply had nowhere safe to go.   We have seen it, and agonised over it, in so many parts of the world today.   When will we ever learn?

And then came an infection so horrible that people died from it in huge numbers.   The pastor was kept increasingly occupied conducting the funerals of his parishioners, at first in ones and twos, but later things became so bad that mass funerals had to be held, and mass graves dug. 

His own wife was among those who died.   

It was a long time ago – at the time of what came to be known as the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).     The epidemic which killed large numbers of the population was the Plague, which later spread to our little offshore islands and is a familiar chapter in our own history books.   But the pattern is repeated wherever there is fighting over the possession of land.     As though the land can ever be said to ‘belong’ to anyone except the Creator.

And it was Martin Rinkart who wrote this hymn of gratitude and praise.

Now thank we all our God,
with hearts and hands and voices,
who wondrous things hath done,
in whom His world rejoices;
who from our mothers’ arms
has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love,
And still is ours today.

It is difficult to be aware, as we are via the media, of world events as they happen, and not to feel a sense of despair that we as one human race continue to inflict so much terrible suffering on our fellow human beings.   And yet there are lovely human stories all around us of help and healing and hope in the face of all the inhumanity.   

I am writing this late in the day of Pentecost.     May the flame which ignited the early church spread, to counter the plague of human stupidity.

And may we help to fan the flame by being people of hope.

Now thank we all our God!