A Hymn of Thanks from the Valley of Death

In 1637, the Saxon town of Eilenburg was a place of unrelenting grief. The Thirty Years' War had driven refugees behind its walls, and plague followed close behind. Pastor Martin Rinkart buried over four thousand of his parishioners that year alone — sometimes forty or fifty in a single day. Among them was his own wife, Katherine. Yet from that valley of relentless sorrow, Rinkart penned the words that would become one of Christianity's greatest hymns of gratitude: Now Thank We All Our God, with Hearts and Hands and Voices.…