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Now thank we all our God
With hearts and hands and voices.
Who wondrous things has done,
In whom the world rejoices.
You, from our mothers’ arms
Have blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love.
And still are ours today.
O may You, bounteous God,
Through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts
And blessed peace to cheer us;
The one eternal God
Whom heaven and earth adore,
For thus it was, is now,
And shall be evermore.
Martin Rinkart (1586-1649) was a German pastor and prolific hymn-writer during the Thirty-Years War. Rinkart was appointed Archdeacon at Eilenburg in 1917, just as the war began, and died shortly after it ended. Eventually, war, famine, and disease left him the only pastor in the city.
