New and old in mealtime graces

God is great, God is good,

and we thank Him for our food;

we’re gonna thank Him morning,
noon and night

for our great God is “outta sight!”

Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen.

(Tune: Rock-around-the-clock)

Have your mealtime blessings become a little, well, boring? Do you find yourself using the same ones over and over again? Is saying grace in danger of becoming little more than a rote exercise?

That’s what happened at my house a few years ago. Together with my husband and our children, Becky, now 13, and Dylan, 10, we had begun to use the same spoken grace before every meal. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that; in many households, a long-used blessing is a way of keeping alive cherished, important memories and traditions.

But I was concerned that our children might begin to associate saying grace with a few memorized but unthoughtful words. I began to compile a collection of sung and spoken graces, in the hope of encouraging my children’s active participation and helping us all reflect more meaningfully on all we have been given.

The Israelites were very particular about saying blessings for their food. Every Jewish meal was seen as a ritual meal, says Massey Shepherd in his book, The Worship of the Church. “No dish was eaten without a prayer of thanksgiving or blessing, a berakah, which the host or the leader of the group said over each kind of food as it was served.” A prayer of blessing was said at the end of the meal, too, often over a cup of wine.

The basis for these mealtime blessings came from Deuteronomy 8:10, where Moses tells the people, “When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the Lord your God for all the good land which He has given you.” This pattern was also demonstrated by Jesus at the Last Supper, when He spoke prayers of blessing over both the bread and the wine before serving it to His disciples.

This practice is still maintained by Orthodox Jews today. Orthodox friends of ours say a different blessing before eating each type of food. They note that many of the blessings they use “have not changed in almost 3,200 years.”

At our house we don’t say blessings over each kind of food we eat. But, like our Jewish friends, we want to express thankfulness for the food we receive, especially since so many people in the world are hungry. But we also want to have some fun with it, particularly when our children are young. And we don’t just use TV show themes; we also sing graces to old hymn tunes and other songs. That way everyone – young and older – can join in, using familiar tunes and new words to say “thanks” for the blessing of having enough food to eat.

When we told our Jewish friends about our fun way of saying grace, they replied: “We can have fun with tunes, as you do. Yesterday we sang the Song of Ascents (the opening psalm to the grace after meals on festive days) to the tune of Deck the Halls. I think we confused our neighbours!”

Christine Longhurst is pastor of worship at River East MB Church, Winnipeg. Her collection of more than 30 sung and spoken table graces is available at the River East website.