Desperately Digging

It's been during a tough, shadowed, emotional and spiritual dig this past week that I've found this nugget of hope when running into a strata of unmined history called the Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reformation or Catholic Revival. It's been many years ago now since learning of the Protestant Reformation era but never remembered that one of it's consequences' was this Catholic resurgence. It seems it all began with the Council of Trent. The whole of it was that the Catholic Church was not about to relinquish the power, influence and material wealth it enjoyed.  This, along with presenting a theological challenge to Luther and the whole of the Protestant Reformation. It spread across Europe like a wildfire and caused darkness to cover the land with The Thirty Years’ War. In one way or another eight million deaths occurred and tens of millions suffered in excruciating pain. During my exercise of essaying this nugget, was finding this brilliant, sparkling, story overwhelming me. The story of a German pastor, Martin Rinkart, who, it is said, 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 darkness, 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.

Tears well up again, as I journal this morning. It's been difficult to pray a prayer like that for me in recent days. While my soul has been in such adversity. No matter the amount of spiritual strength I exude, I've yet accomplished praying with such peace and hope of complete recovery. Honestly, Rinkart’s expressions of thankfulness, at moments this past week, have seemed either incredibly foolish or mysteriously important. I’ve been so convicted and convinced these last few days, after sitting, conversing with my best friend, Dave, his wife, Carol, that amidst the heaviness of darkness, Rinkart must have 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 ever present, no matter how difficult the scene. The author  says that 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.

The Book is open, on my lap, and I read 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.” 

I’m finding it interesting to note that the word I use as ‘glory’ takes 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. O my! Will the things I give most honor always measure up? Under the heaviness of life, what weight does the hope I profess actually carry?

Will I believe Paul; here is proclaiming the eternal weightiness of his hope in Jesus Christ. “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 originate 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 me today and every day, henceforth. Isn’t this God of intrinsic glory in whom I know light and life itself?

I see where this simple table grace of Rinkart’s was later made into a  hymn and sung at a celebration service at the Thirty Year’s War 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.

Father, God, who else have I but Thee to throw my trust and hope?
None but You, my eternal Sovereign!  
Your unworthy son, Bill