Praying After a Meal

I once heard, I'm not sure where or from whom, about a particular group who prayed AFTER a meal was eaten. We as Christians seem to always pray BEFORE a meal, so the thought of praying afterward intrigued me when it came to mind again recently. I seem to recall the point being to show God gratitude for the gift received... Now that you've eaten the food, to give Him thanks for it.

I thought the custom mentioned might have been Jewish, and a quick Google search tonight led me to an article on Wikipedia on Birkat Hamazon, a particular type of prayer after meals involving some types of bread. Wikipedia says the custom is based on Deuteronomy 8:10: "When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you." The prayer is actually made up of four blessings of thanks: for the food, for the land of Israel, for Jerusalem, and for God's goodness. You can read the whole article here, it's pretty interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkat_Hamazon

So, the thought of showing gratitude to God not just before a meal, but after had been bouncing about my head today. I realized after eating most of my dinner that I hadn't, so I said a quick and probably not very sincere prayer to God of thanks. And shortly thereafter, I heard my mom calling from the kitchen. And it didn't sound like good news.

Running to the room, she said someone was bleeding, and there were small tracks of blood across the entire kitchen floor. We quickly found our dog Tyson had an injured paw, bleeding not heavily but well enough to be scary. Something didn't seem right about the way the paw looked... one nail was oddly bent. My dad and brothers were quickly involved, we were trying to stop the bleeding, call the vet, clean up the floor, and I found myself praying a quick, probably not very sincere prayer that God would help this poor little dog and that everything would be okay.

Well, we took a trip to our wonderful veterinarian, who opened her door for us on a Saturday night and bandaged up his paw. God willing, the little guy will be okay, and he was romping around the house again by evening's end. Which was about when I realized...

I never thanked God for answering my prayer and bringing him home safely.

So very often, I pray to God before a meal, but I don't think to thank Him after it's done. And when an emergency arises, I most usually go to Him in prayer (with varying levels of sincerity, but still I do). But then I don't often thank Him afterward. I am thoroughly lacking when it comes to gratitude in my life, in little things and in big. So close on the heels of Thanksgiving, can we be thankful... even after the meal is over?

What are your thoughts on gratitude?

Something Different

Today, I was driving home (I now realize a lot of my posts seem to start this way!) and the song "My Last Amen" by the band Downhere came on the radio. It is a wonderful song, and I highly recommend it. I wanted to write about some of the lyrics, specifically:

"Somewhere in the grand design
It's good be unsatisfied
It keeps the faith and hope a little more alive"

 These words struck me, perhaps especially on the day after Thanksgiving, where a big meal was shared with family and friends and in general it was a time of plenty. Good to be unsatisfied? I wanted to tie it somehow C.S. Lewis' essay "The Weight of Glory," probably where Lewis writes,

"Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

The two thoughts reminded me of each other. It's good to be unsatisfied here on earth; it keeps us longing for those greater rewards that God has offered us. Now, granted, we are to be thankful for what God has given us here. Indeed, some would say the pleasures here on earth are a foreshadowing of what God has promised, a glimpse of the pleasures to come, and not all of them are bad. I think I agree. However, a healthy dose of the knowledge that this place and time are indeed not our home is, in my humble opinion, not a bad thing.

In preparing for this blog, however, I think God threw something different in my path. In looking for the lyrics to "My Last Amen," I also wandered into the lyrics to another Downhere song I was not familiar with, called "Cathedral Made of People." I find the lyrics both challenging and amazing, and so, in lieu of needlessly expounding upon the thoughts above, I will simply share the lyrics to this song and encourage you to give it a listen. Enjoy!

If they shut down the churches,
Where would you go?
If they melted all the stained-glass windows
Replaced every sanctuary with a condo
Where would you go?
Where would you go?

(Chorus)
We are a cathedral made of people
In a kingdom that the eye can't see
We're a house, we are the bride
Where God's Spirit lives inside
And nothing ever could stand against her

If they burned every Bible
What would you know?
If they tore your marked-up pages
How would you grow?
And declared your devotion to be criminal
What would you know?
What would you know?

When they throw you in prison
What will you do?
When they hate you for the things that you know are true
They can tear down this temple,
But they can't touch you.