By the Way: What do we have to be thankful for?
By Pastor Jim Bredeson on October 9, 2021.
Thanksgiving! This year we may wonder what to thank God for. We are in the middle of a pandemic that has claimed nearly 28,000 lives in Canada (50 in Medicine Hat). It has now been declared the deadliest pandemic in American history surpassing the Spanish Flu of 1918. Our society is polarized into all sorts of factions. Reports of violence are increasing. What on earth do we have to be thankful for? Let me take you back in time a bit. A man named Martin Rinkart became pastor of the Lutheran Church in Eilenburg, Saxony, Germany. He had received musical training at the famous St. Thomas Church in Leipzig that would soon become home of Johann Sebastian Bach. He began his pastorate at one of the worst times imaginable. Germany was being ripped apart by the Thirty Years War, a war which began as a religious struggle but soon degenerated even further into a grab for power. Eilenburg was swamped with refugees who flooded in from the countryside as Swedish armies besieged them. In the midst of the refugee crisis, a plague hit claiming 8,000 lives (including Pastor Rinkart’s own wife). At one point he was doing 40-50 funerals a day. Following the plague, a disastrous famine hit the city. It is said that mobs of people would fight over a dead cat or crow. Then, the Swedish army again besieged the city. You think you have troubles!? How would you respond? I can tell you that I have felt tired and even overwhelmed when we recently endured a wave of deaths, more COVID restrictions and a divisive political campaign. The vitriol expressed, especially by professing Christians on social media, is depressing. But listen to how Rinkart responded. He wrote this hymn: 1 Now thank we all our God with heart 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. It may seem difficult to thank God or others when we are struggling. But that’s the power of thanksgiving. Paul reminds us to “Give thanks in all circumstances.” Thanksgiving enables us to look beyond our situation and invites us to see the positive. Paul also tells us, “And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” Thanksgiving works by turning our focus from self to God, from the negative to the positive. Happy Thanksgiving, Medicine Hat! Jim Bredeson is Senior Pastor of Victory Lutheran Church 17-16
