4,000 + Funerals in One Year, and He Still Wrote This?

Looking for that perfect Christmas gift for the family? Why not a chicken? Stick a bow on top, put the chicken under the tree, and who knows, you may even have a couple eggs to fry up for breakfast Christmas morning.

Give the gift that keeps on clucking. A chicken. Okay, maybe it's not the perfect gift for your family, but it is the perfect gift for a poor family in Asia. A chicken can break the cycle of poverty for a poor family. Yes, a chicken.

A chicken's eggs provide food and nourishment for a family, and they can sell those eggs at the market for income. When you donate a chicken or any other animal through Gospel for Asia, 100% of what you give goes to the field. And the best gift of all, when Gospel for Asia gives a poor family an animal, it opens the door to the love of Jesus. So give the perfect gift for a family in Asia this Christmas. Give them a chicken.

Call 866-WINASIA. Or to see chickens and other animals to donate, go to crittercampaign.org. Live on American Family Radio, this is Hope for the Caregiver. This is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver. How are you holding up? How was your Thanksgiving?

How are you doing today? This is for those of you who are pushing the wheelchair, staying up late at night, cleaning up, doing laundry, back and forth to doctor's offices, dealing with all types of drama and task and heartache, loneliness, all the things that involve being a caregiver and joy and excitement and passion and love. But it's for the family caregiver. I'm Peter Rosenberger. I'm in my 35th year as a caregiver and bringing you an understanding of the journey so that you and I both can get strong together, stronger together.

We can stay healthier, calmer, and dare I say it, even more joyful. Welcome to the show. 888-589-8840.

888-589-8840. I want to start off with something a little bit different since we just finished with Thanksgiving and I wanted to share this hymn with you. I'm a big fan of the hymns.

I grew up on them. I learned how to play the piano with hymns and so forth and I love them dearly. And this is a hymn that was written many, many, many years ago back in the 1600s. And the trivia question is, and this is going to be kind of hard, admittedly it's going to be hard, but that's okay because y'all like hard questions.

So here we go. Who wrote this hymn? Who wrote the text for this? And see if you guys know this.

I think you'll, you're probably going to have to Google it, but that's okay. Who wrote this hymn? And the hymn is called Now Thank We All Our God. Now Thank We All Our God. Now some of you may know this.

I'm going to play a little, here's a few bars of it. Listen to the text here. 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 mother's arms has blessed us on our way with countless gifts. So I had to change pages. With countless gifts of love and still is ours today. Okay. Who wrote this hymn?

And why is this important to us as caregivers? This was written during the 30 Years War. And a lot of people consider this more of a German Civil War, but there was more going on than this. And this particular pastor wrote this lyric.

Now let me set the table for you on this. 30 years this war went on and it was a ghastly war. This pastor estimated that he did in one year alone 4,000 funerals. In one day he did 50. But one of those 4,000 was his own wife.

In one year 4,000. Now my father's a pastor. He's done a lot of funerals over the years.

And I've performed and played the piano, done all the music for him and other pastors as well. But I've never done more than one in a day. This guy was doing 4,000 a year. That's about 15 a day. And I know that one day he did 50.

50 funerals. And he wrote this hymn during that time. Now thank we all our God with hearts and hands and voices. Who wonders things has done. In him his world rejoices. The second verse. Oh may this bounteous God through all our life be near us with ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us and keep us in his grace and guide us when perplexed and free us from all ills in this world and the next. That's an amazing text when you know the backdrop of what this man was doing.

He was bearing 4,000 people in one year due to this horrific war. And I know a lot of pastors who truly shy away and hate doing funerals. They do. They just don't like doing them. And they'd rather get up there and preach all the kinds of big positive messages and all this kind of stuff.

But this is the role of pastor. I wrote an article some, I don't know how long it was ago. I think Jim, I think it was done in The Stand. The AFA put it in their blog, The Stand.

You can go out to AFA.net slash The Stand and see all the things I've written. You can just search by name and there's so many other things out there. But it was in some other publications as well. It was called The Lost Office of Pastor because this is what pastors do. They pastor all the way to the cemetery.

And it's costly. But this man's theology was beyond what I can even imagine to be able to write a lyric like that. Now, how does that apply to us as caregivers? Some of us have been in this journey a long time, but we haven't had to look at the carnage that someone like this man has had to look at that was able to write this hymn. But we can draw strength from his faith.

We can draw strength from his commitment to understanding the principles of God that extend beyond what we see and experience in this world. That hymn in Germany is the second most performed hymn, sung hymn in the entire country. You know what the first one is? I'll give you a bonus trivia question if you get this one.

What the first one is. And it is an extraordinary piece of music that faded away from a lot of churches. But it's about what we talk about on this show, that we're going to stand firm and be resilient and see the principles of God in the midst of whatever. If this guy can do it while he is burying 4000 people in his own town where he lives, including one of them is his wife.

50 services one time in one day. If he can do this, doesn't that give us a little extra courage to say, okay, what is he finding out that we need to know? What is he seeing that we need to see? What is he experiencing in God that would benefit us? Now thank we all our 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. What an extraordinary hymn to write in the face of such horrific, horrific loss and sorrow and heartache. And so I say that to you today as my fellow caregivers, because this is what, this is how I do it.

This is what anchors me. Now in my 35th year as a caregiver, and I've had to look at a lot of hard things. Gracie and I have had to walk through very painful, painful things. And it's unending.

It doesn't show any signs of ending. Can I be thankful in it? Can I be resolute?

Can I see the big picture? I can't do it without God's help. But I can do it. Because he says that I can. And so can you. So can you. No matter what is going on in your life right now, he can and will and does equip us to face these things with steadfastness, fortitude and strength.

Now those are things that don't play real well on a lot of Christian media. We all want to get our breakthrough. We all want to get delivered to this thing and get on so we can go live our happy lives. But if you've got any kind of length of time in this as a caregiver, you understand that happiness is a poor goal. Healthiness is a better one where we can be spiritually healthy, physically healthy, emotionally healthy, financially healthy, all the above. We can do these things pursuing that line of thinking, not just saying, I just want to feel good, because it's not about feeling good. It's not about feeling better. It's just not.

It's about being better. And part of being better is understanding the magnificence of our Savior in the context of the horrificness that we look at sometimes. This man did it. If you know his name, give us a call. 888-589-8840.

He wrote now, thank we all our God. He was a pastor. Give us a call if you know it.

That's an obscure one. You may have to look it up, but that's OK. 888-589-8840 or whatever else is on your mind, we'd love to hear from you. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hopeful the Caregiver.

We'll be right back. More than a dozen years, we've been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people. On a regular basis, we purchase and ship equipment and supplies.

And with the help of inmates in a Tennessee prison, we also recycle parts from donated limbs. All of this is to point others to Christ, the source of my hope and strength. Please visit standingwithhope.com to learn more and participate in lifting others up. That's standingwithhope.com. I'm Gracie, and I am standing with hope. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the show for you as a family caregiver. How are you holding up? How are you doing?

How are you feeling? Jim, during the break, sent me a text on the stand at afa.net. You can read my article, The Lost Office of Pastor. It was posted on May 9, 2020. Way to go, Jim.

Jim was on top of it. I have a heart for pastors, and I want them to understand that there are people out there that support them in what they do, and they pray for them, they understand it. And what we've done is we've segmented so much of the office of pastor. We have guys that do, they're just going to preach, or these guys are just going to teach, or these guys are just assigned to minister in the hospital, whatever. But if you're called to ministry, you're called to pastor, because that's what Jesus was. He pastored people.

And I'd encourage you to go out and read this at the stand and all the articles they have out there. But you could just, it was on May, let me see what that was again. It was May 9, 2020. I've got a couple of people say that they know the answer, which I'm very impressed about, because it's a little bit of an obscure thing of who wrote this hymn, Now Thank We All Our God. Now Thank We All Our God. So I've got Nancy in Arkansas. Nancy, good morning.

How are you feeling? Good morning, but I didn't mean to talk on the radio. Well, that's all right.

I didn't mean to either, Nancy. Do you know the answer to the question? Well, you want the author of the words? Yes, ma'am. Who was the pastor who wrote that lyric?

Martin Reinker. Very good. Very good, Nancy.

Do you know, we've got to give you a big applause here. Do you know the second question, which was, what's the most performed, what's most sung hymn in Germany? Isn't it the national anthem?

Oh, goodness, I can't think of it now. The hymn. Yeah, I know it, and they use it for the national anthem.

I used to. God the Omnipotent? No, I'm not sure. No, this is, but Martin Reinker's hymn is the second one. It was a Now Thank We All Our God is the second most performed one in Germany, but the first one is written by a guy named Martin Luther.

Two Martins. Well, I wanted to tell you that we don't sing anything but hymns in our church. We've sung that song three times this week, and our pastor even used the words to the, you know, all the stanzas in his sermon as an example.

Isn't that great? Well, you give your pastor a lot of affirmation on that, because you're getting some good, solid theology on that, because it's not about just, you know, everybody's got to feel better, everybody's got to be happy, happy, happy. It's about strengthening us to face the difficult times by anchoring us in the Word of God. That's why we do this show. That's what separates this show out from any other show for caregivers that I've ever heard, is that we are going to plow deep into the Word of God to make sure that we are equipped with strong theology, so that we can face these things, so that we can be strong in the midst of these things.

And so I am really, really happy for you that you're in a church that understands that and is doing that for you, and so thank you. No, ma'am. That was from Beethoven.

But you got the hard question right. Martin Reinkard, you did a great job on that, Nancy, so thank you. Thank you for listening to the show. Oh, I wouldn't, don't listen to anything else. Well, you, listen, thank you very much, and you behave yourself today, all right?

Bye. Hey, this is John Butler, producer of Hope for the Caregiver, and I have learned something that you probably all know, that Gracie, his wife, lost her legs many, many years ago and started a prosthetic limb outreach ministry called Standing with Hope. And recently, they ended up with a rather unique and unexpected partner. Peter had a conversation with Gracie, and take a listen. Gracie, when you envision doing a prosthetic limb outreach, did you ever think that inmates would help you do that?

Not in a million years. When you go to the facility run by CoreCivic, and you see the faces of these inmates that are working on prosthetic limbs that you have helped collect from all over the country, that you put out the plea for, and they're disassembling. You see all these legs, like what you have, your own prosthetic legs. And arms.

And arms. When you see all this, what does that do to you? Makes me cry. Because I see the smiles on their faces, and I know, I know what it is to be locked someplace where you can't get out without somebody else allowing you to get out.

Of course, being in the hospital so much and so long. And so, these men are so glad that they get to be doing, as one band said, something good finally with my hands. Did you know before you became an amputee that parts of prosthetic limbs could be recycled? No, I had no idea.

You know, I thought of peg leg, I thought of wooden legs, I never thought of titanium and carbon legs and flex feet and sea legs and all that. I never thought about that. As you watch these inmates participate in something like this, knowing that they're helping other people now walk, they're providing the means for the supplies to get over there, what does that do to you, just on a heart level? I wish I could explain to the world what I see in there. And I wish that I could be able to go and say, this guy right here, he needs to go to Africa with us. I never not feel that way.

Every time, you know, you always make me have to leave, I don't want to leave them. I feel like I'm at home with them, and I feel like that we have a common bond that I would have never expected that only God could put together. Now that you've had an experience with it, what do you think of the faith-based programs that CoreCivic offers? I think they're just absolutely awesome. And I think every prison out there should have faith-based programs like this because the return rate of the men that are involved in this particular faith-based program and the other ones like it, but I know about this one, it's just an amazingly low rate compared to those who don't have them. And I think that that says so much.

That doesn't have anything to do with me. It just has something to do with God using somebody broken to help other broken people. If people want to donate a used prosthetic limb, whether from a loved one who passed away or, you know, somebody who outgrew them, you've donated some of your own for them to do. How do they do that? Oh, please go to standingwithhope.com slash recycle. Standingwithhope.com slash recycle. Thanks, Gracie.