From Table to Mouth

As long as are memories are table blessings.  When I look back at the earliest days of my childhood, I am often amazed that they were filled with things pointing me toward God.  Before every meal there was a moment for bowing heads and offering a prayer of blessing for the food.  The blessings I learned as a young boy were short, simple, and easy enough to memorize.  They were learned from my mother who, as I look back at those years, was always seeking to  point me toward God.

 

Learning it is important to be grateful for food is an important lesson.  It may seem to just show up on the table, but it never really happens that way.  In the days of growing up, food came not from the take out window at a nearby fast food dispensary, but from a kitchen where hours were spent getting food ready and cooking it.  Only as an adult did I learn why so many prayers include both a word of gratitude for the food and the one who prepares it.  Cooking a meal was then and continues to be an act of love. 

 

Nowadays, as I consider pre-meal moments, I find my view broadening even beyond the immediacy of the garden outside and the kitchen in our home.  Nothing we eat just comes.  It comes paid for with sacrifice, sweat, energy, and time.   Animals are slaughtered for meat, produce comes from a ground heavy with sweat, and working hours bring it to the table.  But, beyond all of this is the graciousness of a God who has created an order which is abundant in life giving provisions.   God blesses us in more ways than we can count, but if we can count to three, we know there are at least three moments in the span of a day when those life giving blessings move from table to mouth.