Eating with an Attitude of Thanks

Father, we thank you for this day, and we thank you for Your Son. We thank you for this food, and we ask that you would bless this food to our bod­ies. In Jesus’ name, amen.

I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that prayer or a vari­a­tion thereof at the begin­ning of meals. I’ve prayed that prayer myself many times, yet Ali­cia & I do not make it an issue to pray over meals nowa­days. Lee Shel­ton asked the ques­tion whether or not Chris­tians should pray before meals, and it got me think­ing about why we don’t, whether we should, and so on.

Here is what I have come up with:

Giv­ing of Thanks: Examples

• Jesus Christ in John 6:11 expressed thanks for food prior to divvy­ing it up to serve. We are not told the details of what He said beyond a sim­ple expres­sion of grat­i­tude. Did any­one else there do the same? I can’t say for sure.
• The Lord also expressed thanks dur­ing the Last Sup­per meal, for both the bread and the wine sep­a­rately (Matthew 26:26, 27). Verse 26 says that Jesus “blessed” the bread, but 1 Corinthi­ans 11:24 clar­i­fies that the bless­ing was an act of thanks­giv­ing rather than some form of con­se­cra­tion. Did any­one else there express the same thanks­giv­ing? I can’t say for sure.
• The Apos­tle Paul in Acts 27:35 also found him­self in a group sit­u­a­tion on board a ship with 275 men who had not eaten in two weeks. He urged them to take some food, and then gave thanks to God in their pres­ence, after which he would take some bread and begin to eat. Upon see­ing all of this, the oth­ers were encour­aged and they too took and eat. Did any­one else there express thanks? I can’t say for sure.

As a Chris­t­ian, then I can think of no two more promi­nent exam­ples than the Christ Him­self and the man cho­sen to pen more books of the Bible than any­one else, a man God used to extend His King­dom through­out var­i­ous Gen­tile lands. And what do these two men have in common?

They expressed thanks for their food. That’s all the text says, so I’m not going to risk adding to it, but you’ll note that they didn’t make an issue to join hands, pray a prayer, and so on. Per­haps they sim­ply said, “Thank you, Father, for this food.” “Thanks, God, for this meal.” “Lord, thank you for this bless­ing.” They expressed thanks, they appar­ently did so pub­licly, and they did so prior to par­tak­ing of the food.

Now, I could stop here, but I real­ize that many will not be sat­is­fied with merely fol­low­ing “exam­ple,” and I can under­stand that. If there isn’t more than that, we run this risk of sim­ply turn­ing the prac­tice into a faith­less tradition.

Giv­ing of Thanks: Reasoning

Our next step is the source of my “romans1423” han­dle which I use in many places online: Romans 14.

The chap­ter touches on a num­ber of issues, but Paul takes the oppor­tu­nity to deal with rela­tions between “the weak per­son who eats only veg­eta­bles” ((The Scrip­tures declare the veg­e­tar­ian & Vegan lifestyles to belong to those who are “weak in faith” (v. 1); that’s rea­son enough for me to con­tinue eat­ing meat, no mat­ter what the pro­pa­ganda may be telling me! I also can­not help but won­der why peo­ple would ever claim Jesus was a veg­e­tar­ian or Vegan; how is it even pos­si­ble to imag­ine that God Him­self was “weak in faith”? Then I remem­ber that peo­ple who make such claims to get atten­tion from Chris­tians most likely aren’t famil­iar with much Scrip­ture at all, and I move on. Much like I should do here. Thanks for chas­ing this rab­bit with me.)) and he who “believes he may eat any­thing” (v. 2).

What Paul con­cludes is that it is not for us to judge whether some­one wants to eat meat or not, whether they want to esteem one day in par­tic­u­lar or every day, and so on. These are issues of free­dom — we don’t have to eat meat, for exam­ple — and in such cir­cum­stances, we need only to make sure that we are “fully con­vinced in [our] own mind[s]” (v. 5) and that we are to eat with faith, for “who­ever has doubts is con­demned if he eats, because the eat­ing is not from faith. For what­ever does not pro­ceed from faith is sin” (v. 23). The rest of the chap­ter really ought to put to rest all sorts of issues within the church (includ­ing what Chris­tians should wear in church or else­where, what styles of music they should lis­ten to, and son on); Paul’s instruc­tion con­cern­ing food is far reach­ing, and every Chris­t­ian ought to be famil­iar with it.

Okay, so we can eat meat if we want to, so what? What does that have to do with the giv­ing of thanks before meals? Glad you asked! Check out verse 6: “The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.”

Whether our meal con­tains meat or not, we honor God by thank­ing God.

I’m being very care­ful here to not turn this into a com­mand to express thanks to God because the lan­guage of Scrip­ture does not come across as com­mand­ing in these instances; how­ever, it’d be very hard to over­es­ti­mate the impor­tance of hon­or­ing God and thank­ing Him when­ever the oppor­tu­nity arises. Keep in mind Romans 1:21, in which Paul links dis­hon­or­ing God & ungrate­ful­ness with fool­ish repro­bates! I don’t know about you, but I’d pre­fer not to be asso­ci­ated with that over some­thing as sim­ple as hon­or­ing God through thanksgiving.

Bless This Food

This is the tricky part. Do we need to ask the Lord to sanc­tify or to make holy our food prior to eat­ing it? That we ought to be thank­ful (truly thank­ful, not pro­vid­ing mere lip ser­vice or rit­u­al­iz­ing true thanks­giv­ing) is very clear, I think, but what about this busi­ness of meal consecration?

• At the time of man’s cre­ation, God con­se­crated fruits & veg­eta­bles to be use­ful as food (Gen­e­sis 1:29).
• After the Flood, God said “As I gave you the green plants, I give you every­thing”; just as He had con­se­crated the plants for use as food, He then con­se­crated “every mov­ing thing that lives” as food (Gen­e­sis 9:3) pro­vided they were not eaten with their blood (v. 4).
• Under the Mosaic Law, Israel was for­bid­den to eat a vari­ety of ani­mals as a way of sep­a­rat­ing them from the Gen­tile nations.
• Now in this Church Age, the Lord has once again con­se­crated all ani­mals as food, “for every­thing cre­ated by God is good, and noth­ing is to be rejected if it is received with thanks­giv­ing” (1 Tim­o­thy 4:4, and there’s that “thanks­giv­ing” thing again!).

Not only does the cur­rent con­se­cra­tion of ani­mals for food include all ani­mals, but it also includes meat which has been sac­ri­ficed to idols (1 Corinthi­ans 10:25). The rea­son Paul gives for this is because “the earth is the Lord’s and the full­ness thereof” (v. 26).

Frankly, that’s awe­some! I can eat beef, pork, chicken, and turkey with­out worry, know­ing that they belong to the Lord and that He has declared that they may be eaten. If I really wanted to, I could par­take of some oys­ters, cala­mari, or escar­got; I could, but I doubt I’ll ever want to. It’s just nice know­ing the options are there!

But take a look at 1 Tim­o­thy 5. We already ref­er­enced verse 4 which says that noth­ing is to be refused if it is received with thanks­giv­ing, but then we come to verse 5 which gives us the rea­son: “for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”

The first half of that — that the food is made holy by the word of God — makes sense enough: we’ve already seen that fruits, veg­gies, and meats have been declared “food” by God.

But what about that “prayer” thing? Bible com­men­ta­tor John Gill con­nects this prayer with the prayer the Israelites made after they ate & were made full in the Promised Land (Deuteron­omy 8:10). The Israelites were prompted by the meal to prayer­ful ado­ra­tion to God for the “good land” they had received. If that is the case (and I don’t think it is), Chris­tians should con­clude every meal with prayer­ful ado­ra­tion for the bless­ings (par­tic­u­larly the sal­va­tion in Christ) which they have received.

Instead, I think that the “prayer” Paul refers to is the sim­ple expres­sion of grat­i­tude which should pre­cede meals. After all, that fits the exam­ples of Jesus & Paul. It also fits in that we have seen being thank­ful unques­tion­ably linked with the par­tak­ing of food; if we are thank­ful to God for the meal, we honor Him and enjoy His con­se­cra­tion of the meal. If we are not thank­ful to God for the meal, then we are dis­hon­or­ing God, and noth­ing good has ever come that.

Con­clu­sion

Pro­vided that you are truly thank­ful to God for your meal and that you express that to Him ((Whether that should be silent or out loud may sim­ply be a mat­ter of pref­er­ence. I pre­fer silent.)) prior to eat­ing, and pro­vided that you are not eat­ing with doubt about what you are eat­ing ((If your atti­tude is akin to, “I shouldn’t be eat­ing this,” then don’t eat it! You can­not mix both doubt and faith.)), then you are likely doing just fine inso­far as your meals are concerned.

Oh, and I don’t want to get through an entire post about food with­out say­ing: “Glut­tony: It does a body bad”

Thanks for reading!