Series Introduction
For a few years now, gratitude has been the rage. Thankful lists, thankful apps, thankful hashtags, thankful journals… What a polite culture.
Thank goodness.
Thank WHO?
(“The worst moment for an atheist,” said GK Chesterton, “is when he’s really thankful and has no one to thank.”)
And thanks for what?
Why should the breaking of bread be linked to prayer any more than a dozen other dailies? In his essay, ‘Grace Before Meat’, Charles Lamb said, “I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, these spiritual repasts—a grace before Milton—a grace before Shakespeare—a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading ‘The Fairie Queene’?”
Why do we have ‘the saying of grace’?
In this Daily Bible series, let’s revisit a largely perfunctory practice, roots and all, and stir it up with some passion and perspective.
* Christian apologist/ philosopher/author/literary and art critic
Reflection: Serious business
I know desert dwellers in Pakistan to silent-eat around their shared bowl of food.
Food is precious. Consuming it is solemn.
Pare life back to essential flesh and bones: we need food, clothing and safe shelter.
Not to have these is to confront our fragile humanity.
And millions there are today too hungry even to apprehend that plight.
No food, no life.
Solemn pause.
Bread, we have. Solemn pause.
Sustained, we are. Grace.
All this, only by the hand of our creator God. Gratitude.
Prayer:
Grace. It’s all grace! [name a few of today’s particular gifts of grace]
Creator of teeming heaven, earth and sea
We marvel at you and your sustaining gifts of rain and fruitful seasons.
Satisfy our bodies today with food and shelter and our hearts with joy.
To your insatiable world, permitted to walk in our own ways,
Gracious Lord, grant reverence and spiritual hunger for you.
And oh, satisfy us to our core, the way you made us to be.
Teach and nurture us to be daily satisfied in you
Again, and again, and again.
All good gifts around us are sent from heav’n above;
Then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord for all His love.
(chorus of hymn We plough the fields, and scatter by Matthias Claudius)