Saying Grace before meals is a tangible way to show we appreciate how God provides for us. Most believers are familiar with this practice of saying a prayer before eating. Yet in the business of everyday life, it can be easy to forget this small gesture. Over time, repeating the same words might feel mundane or start to lose some of its substance.
Hopefully this blog post can infuse new inspiration into saying grace before meals, seeing it as a welcomed moment of pause within each day.
Daily Bread
Giving thanks for food is a common practice throughout history and across cultures. When people relied more heavily on the weather and land for daily survival, harvesting food was seen as a greater blessing worthy of celebration. Practicing mindfulness for something as fundamental as food can shift our perspective from something that is oftentimes overlooked, to having a more grateful and humble heart.
Nothing is too little to be noticed. St. Mary MacKillop
Even in modern day when many people have an abundance of food accessible, there are still many who do not. Imagine how different daily life would be if impacted by a lack of food. Maybe you or someone you know has experienced this through difficult times. Food is necessary to nourish our bodies and minds, so creating a habit of thankfulness for the basic blessing of food is a simple way to praise God for His provision in our lives.
The Journey of Food
This is a simple mindfulness exercise you can try incorporating into prayer before each meal. Start by reflecting on all the things that had to come together for a meal to be made. This is especially true with complex recipes, but works just as well with something simple, using only a few ingredients. Let’s use this Simple Flourless Pancake recipe as an example.
Eggs: caring for livestock, chicken who laid the egg, transporting from farm to store, grocery clerk who stocks shelves, whoever purchases groceries
Oatmeal: sowing the seeds, tending to and harvesting the plant, packaging of the grain, transporting to the store, stocking shelves, whoever purchases groceries
Banana: planting the seed, tending to the plant, gathering fruit, transporting to the store, the grocer and shopper
Toppings: you can follow the same pattern with any additional ingredients—vanilla, peanut butter, maple syrup, berries, cream cheese, tea, coffee, cream—the list goes on. And that’s only for one simple meal!
Without the resources and work from each point in the line, something as simple as a 3 ingredient meal isn’t so simple anymore. Take away any one element, and consider how it would affect the meal as a whole. Without an egg, the pancakes wouldn’t hold together. Without the chicken to lay an egg or someone to gather them, they wouldn’t be conveniently available in stores.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t know the first thing about raising chickens, or harvesting oats, or growing bananas. We rely on others more than we realize, which is beautiful—humans counting on other humans, in ways we may never fully understand. There are people we will never meet on this side of Heaven who play a role in the coming together of so many things, which extends far beyond just food.
It is with the smallest brushes that the artist paints the most exquisitely beautiful pictures. St. André Bessette
You might be thinking it’s a bit heavy to think this way, especially several times throughout each day, everyday. But it doesn’t need to be a long deep reflection, just an awareness of something that is often easy to gloss over.
Saying grace before meals isn’t for God’s benefit or a quick check off of our holy to do lists. Thanking God for all the people and things and processes in place in order to bring food to our tables and nourishment to our bodies can reposition our hearts for the better—cultivating a deeper sense of humility and praise to the One who oversees and provides all these gifts and more.
Intricate Blessings
In addition to the journey of food itself, saying grace before meals can also extend gratitude to other related areas, such as the “means and ability to make and consume” the food before us. What does this mean exactly? Let’s break down each element:
Means to make: having the resources, tools, and appliances required to cook and prepare a meal
Ability to make: having the physical ability to move and operate in a kitchen in order to make a meal
Means to consume: having the resources to eat and enjoy food, a safe place to eat, utensils to eat with, a table to eat at, a roof to eat beneath
Ability to consume: having the capability to feed ourselves, and derive nourishment and energy from food
If you’ve ever had an injury or surgery that impacted your mobility, you probably know the challenge of adapting to find new ways of doing tasks that were previously done without thinking.
Take away any one of those elements, and it could drastically alter day to day routines in life. Whether it’s throwing lunch together for school, grabbing breakfast on your way to work, eating after a late night shift, or cooking dinner for loved ones over a holiday—no moment is too small or passing for God’s praise.
This practice of gratitude may seem tedious, time consuming, or even too mindful, especially in a culture that prides itself on always being on the go and getting more and more accomplished. But in reality, it only takes a few seconds. It doesn’t need to be formal, perfectly phrased, or even said aloud—just a posture of thanks.
Gratitude is the memory of the heart. St. Mary MacKillop
Mindfully saying grace is also a great practice to start if you want to pray more throughout the day, but you’re unsure how or where to begin. Meals are a natural, expected part of one’s routine, and they’re spaced throughout the day. Including additional prayers at the end, each time you say grace, is a very simple and practical way to start being more mindful and consistent in your prayer life with God.
God is Great
The power of saying grace positions our hearts to receive all God has for us. When we are grateful, content, and faithful in the small, those qualities are magnified in greater blessings.
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. Mother Teresa
When we shift our perspective of what a miracle is, and start praising God in the small and menial, like saying grace before meals, then everyday moments we previously passed over begin opening up, and life will start glistening with miracles all around.
The beauty of prayer is that God is accessible to us at all times. And He is eager to listen—wherever we are and whatever we’re doing. Whether you sit around a table and pray with others, or say a silent prayer to yourself in a coffee shop. He sees your heart and intention, so there’s no wrong way to give thanks.
I hope these words inspire a new perspective and encourage you to spend an extra moment in prayer the next time you say grace—thanking God for all that He provides, in an abundance of ways.
≫ What prayer have you learned to say before meals? Share it below!
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