When the tough times come

I recall a visit I once made to an elderly gentleman who had recently been bereaved after more than 60 years of marriage.  Naturally it was a sad time for him, though in one sense his wife’s death had come as something of a release for her, as she had suffered increasing ill-health for some years.  They had been through some very tough times together.  As we were talking, he told me that he had been asked by some people whether his faith in God had been shaken by the long period of his wife’s suffering.  His response was that it had been his faith, and that of his wife, and the knowledge they both had of God’s presence with them, that had given them the strength to face the hard times. 

One of my responsibilities is to lead bi-monthly communion services in a local Care Centre.  We usually sing a few hymns as part of the service, and in preparation for a recent visit I thought that it might be of interest for the residents of the Care Home to learn something of the background to the hymns and their writers.  As I undertook the research, I was interested to learn a little about a 17^th century hymn-writer, Martin Rinkart.

Rinkart was a Lutheran minister who arrived in the German city of Eilenburg at the beginning of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).  The walled city of Eilenburg became a refuge for political and military fugitives, but the result was overcrowding, and deadly pestilence and famine.  The Rinkart home was itself a refuge for the victims, even though he was often hard-pressed to provide for his own family. During the height of a severe plague in 1637, Rinkart, as the only surviving minister in the city, performed more than 4000 funerals, including that of his wife. 

One might have expected that, given the situation of massive suffering which Rinkart witnessed, and the loss of his own dear wife, Rinkart’s faith might have been shaken.  Yet, despite living in a world dominated by death, Rinkart wrote the following prayer for his children to offer to God:

Now thank we all our God,

With hearts and hands and voices;

Who wondrous things has 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.

That is, of course, the first verse of a hymn still much loved today.  The words are beautiful in themselves, but when one understands the context in which they were written, they become even more poignant and powerful.

When we face hard times in our life, we can either turn away from God, or we can run to him for the strength and help we need.  I know that in the really tough times in my own life, when I have felt at my very lowest, it has been the knowledge of God’s loving presence (even though I haven’t always felt him near) that has kept me going.  After all, if we turn away from God, where else is there to go?