Amid the darkness of the Thirty Years’ War, German pastor Martin Rinkart is said to have buried nearly five thousand fellow citizens and parishioners in one year, including his young wife. Conducting as many as fifty funerals a day, Rinkart’s church was absolutely ravaged by war and plague, famine and economic disaster. Yet in the midst of that dark year, he sat down with his children and wrote the following lines as a prayer for the dinner table:

 

Now thank we all our God

With heart and hands and voices;

Who wondrous things hath done,

In Whom his world rejoices.

Who, from our mother’s arms,

Hath led us on our way

With countless gifts of love

And still is ours today.

 

O may this bounteous God

through all our life be near us,

With ever joyful hearts

and blessed peace to cheer us;

And keep us still in grace,

and guide us when perplexed;

And free us from all ills,

in this world and the next.

 

In the midst of such gloom, Rinkart’s expressions of thankfulness seem either incredibly foolish or mysteriously important. Standing on this Christian notion, Rinkart saw the certainty of God and the significance of thanksgiving. He saw that to be thankful was to make the bold confession that encountering the presence and glory of God far outweighs everything else we encounter, whether a matter of despair or delight. Amidst the heaviness of darkness, he saw the wisdom in fixing his gaze on what he could not see—the light of the Gospel, the life of Christ, the eternal weight of the glory of a God who is among us.

 

The Apostle Paul, who lived similarly, wrote of his own dark encounters as “momentary affliction” in which he saw nonetheless an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. “For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”(1)

 

It is interesting to note that the general Greek word for glory used in secular writing took an entirely different shape in the New Testament. The word was particularly influenced by its Hebrew counterpart meaning “weighted” or “heavy,” and hence, denoting something of honor and importance. The word doxology, referring to an expression of praise, comes from the same Greek word. The etymology is fascinating because the word itself seems to cry out for comparison. Will the things I give most honor always measure up? Under the heaviness of life, what weight does the hope I profess actually carry?

 

Here, Paul proclaims the eternal weightiness of his hope in Jesus Christ. “[F]or it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” The peculiar message of hope in the midst of darkness originates for the Christian with the God who first spoke light into darkness, the God who made light to shine in the darkness of Christ’s grave, and the inextinguishable light of Christ given to shine upon us today. It is this God of intrinsic glory in whom we know light and life itself.

 

Martin Rinkart’s simple table grace was later made into a powerful hymn and sung at a celebration service at the war’s end. Adding a third stanza, Rinkart’s words continue with thanksgiving, concluding fittingly with words of doxology, words proclaiming the weightiness of the glory of God.

 

All praise and thanks to God

the Father now be given;

The Son and Him Who reigns

with Them in highest heaven;

The one eternal God,

Whom earth and heaven adore;

For thus it was, is now,

and shall be evermore.

 

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

 

(1) See 2 Corinthians 4:16.

(2) 2 Corinthians 4:6.