Mealtime Prayer

Many Christians come from homes where prayer is said before every meal. It was like that in my home even though my family was really only nominally Christian at the time. We were very faithful at the practice as well. I don't really remember ever not praying.

"Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen."

While praying before eating is a commendable habit, notice the focus of the prayer that my family and many others use. It is a prayer to God that He would bless us and the food that we are about to eat. It does recognize that the meal came from the bounty of God, but there is no word of thanks to God. In fact, this particular prayer makes it sound like we are afraid that the food might be poisoned or will be harmful to us. So we pray that God will bless us and keep us from that harm. This is superstition. I'm not sure that this is the kind of prayer we really should be praying.

John 6:11 (KJV)
¹¹ And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.

In this verse we see that before feeding the 5,000, Jesus gave thanks for the food. This was a tradition of the Jews and Jesus obviously approved of it. But did you know that there is no command in Scripture to pray before eating? There is a command, but it is to pray after eating.


Deuteronomy 8:10 (KJV)
¹⁰ When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the LORD thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.


After eating we are to bless the Lord, which means to "honor as holy, or glorify" the Lord (The Free Online Dictionary). Basically, we are to thank Him and praise Him, not ask Him to bless us or our food. Secondly, we are to bless Him because of the good land that He has given us. This was written to an agrarian society that had to work hard to provide food for their families. For many of us, today, we get our food from the grocery store. This doesn't change where food comes from. So we should still thank Him for the land that has produced our food, but I think a general blessing of the Lord for our food, wherever and however we get it, is an acceptable aspect of our prayer.

So let's examine our mealtime prayers. When do we pray? We can pray before we eat, but don't forget to pray after eating. Are we praying with the right focus? Remember to bless God and to thank Him for His provision. It is acceptable to pray a standard prayer or to pray spontaneously as long as the focus is correct.

My guess is that we all could use some improvement in our mealtime prayers. They deserve our attention and our best effort.