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Imagine a man who will conduct forty to fifty funerals a day, burying nearly 4500 people in all. Among those dying would be his wife. Towards the end, the deaths would be so frequent that the bodies would just be placed in trenches, without burial rites.

Imagine also that this person would be so thankful for these experiences that he’d write a hymn that would be sung by Christians 300 years later on another continent.

A fantasy?

Not if you’re describing Martin Rinkart, a Lutheran pastor of Germany during the Thirty Years’ War. He lived in a walled city, the walls being the reason it was a place of hiding for thousands of refugees. The over-crowding brought on epidemic and famine. All other officials and pastors fled, leaving Rinkart alone to care for the dying. The hymn he composed: …