Luke 24:50

"...lifting up his hands, he blessed them."

Reflection by Donna Schaper

If a meal can start with a prayer, it can be spiritually digested.  By that I mean taken in, comprehended by the body as nourishment, relieved from anxiety.  If a meal can't start with a prayer, it is likely to cause anxiety, only provide physical nourishment, and taken in only to be burped up.  Consider the shelves of antacids in the drug store and you will know what I mean.  Alka-Seltzer is often the alternative to prayer, and also more popular.

What prevents prayer at the start of a meal?  We are in a hurry to eat.  Or we are hungry.  Or we are anxious at the spread before us and know somewhere in our "gut" that there is too much food in front of us and that a child is somewhere moaning for what we will end up throwing away.  Scientists now agree that the American obesity epidemic is related to there being too much agricultural success: our very abundance and the low cost of our food gasses us up.  Whatever the root  ause, many of us eat fast, using our utensils as shovels.  We refuse to pause.

Grace at table could be as simple as a breath, air taken in with consciousness and expelled with same.  It could be as meaningful as setting the table well and lighting a candle.  It need not be words. It could be breath or light.  It could also be something that belonged to you or your family; it could be ancient words that gather strength the more they are repeated.   The day the first member of our family or group dies, and we say our well-practiced prayer without them, we begin to touch our grief.  We weep, the same way we mumbled for so long.

Grace is a pause at the marvel of a table being set before us.  In a world where so many don't eat, it is a miracle to eat. The miracle deserves a pause and a prayer.  Einstein argued there were two kinds of people, those who thought everything a miracle and those who didn't believe in miracles.  Food is a miracle.  That we can experience eating is even more of one.

Prayer

Thank you, God, for food but even more for the possibility of being thankful for it.

About the Author Donna Schaper is the Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church in New York City. Her latest work is 20 Ways to Keep Sabbath, from The Pilgrim Press. Check out her work at www.judson.org.