Why You Should Pray Before You Eat

Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow

My sisters and I grew up with a picture of Charles Wilden in our dining room. We didn’t know his name all those years, but there he was, right there on our wall. I’m sure my mom didn’t know his name either, but that picture was there because she wanted it there. As an adult, I discovered that Wilden was a peddler who lived in a sod house in Minnesota and the photograph was taken by Eric Enstrom in his studio in Bovey, Minnesota about 1920. Wilden later waived his rights to the photo for $5. The dictionary on the table was a prop representing a Bible and Wilden was not particularly known as a religious man. But Enstrom’s daughter eventually colorized the photograph by hand and it went on to become one of the most iconic images of the early 20th century. For my sisters and me, it was one more thing that normalized the tradition of thanking God for our meal before we ate it.

Just For Old People and Children?

By 1951, Norman Rockwell acknowledged the tradition of praying before eating with his painting, “Saying Grace,” in which an old woman and a little boy bow their heads to thank God in a bustling public diner. The diner was so crowded they had to share a table with two young men who curiously look on. In the 1950s, was thanking God for your meal a tradition just for old women and young children? Or did old women just have more guts than young men?

By the 1970’s one of the most popular programs on television was The Waltons and our family watched it every Thursday night. In the early 70’s, our nation endured Vietnam, campus protests, racial tensions, Watergate, the Oil Crisis, high inflation, and a host of other depressing and distressing crises. The Waltons, set in the Depression Era mountains of western Virginia, helped us escape to simpler, more wholesome times. And if you ever watched The Waltons, you know that before every meal, they held hands and prayed.

You Got Bible For That?

Is this tradition Biblical? Where does Scripture command us to pray before we eat? Like so many Christian traditions, there’s no specific command, but there’s plenty of Biblical data to make us think that it’s a very good idea for a Christian to pause before the meal, bow in humility, and give thanks to God, from whose hand comes all good gifts. Here are some reasons to cherish and pass on the tradition in your own home:

1. Throughout the Old Testament, feasting and giving thanks always went together when God’s people gathered, as in Hezekiah’s day when “they ate the food of the festival…giving thanks to the Lord, the God of their fathers” (2 Chron. 30:22).

2. Jesus instructs us to ask our heavenly Father for “our daily bread” in the Lord’s Prayer (Mt. 6:11) because he is the source of all our good. God created all kinds of food “to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth (1 Timothy 4:3).

3. In a very public setting at the feeding of the 4000, Jesus “took the seven loaves and the fish, and having given thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds” (Mt. 15:36).

4. In a very private setting in the Upper Room, Jesus “took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them” (Lk 22:19). And then “he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you” (Mt. 26:27).

5. During a deadly storm at sea, Paul, the prisoner, comforted his guards by saying, “‘Therefore I urge you to take some food. For it will give you strength, for not a hair is to perish from the head of any of you.’ And when he had said these things, he took bread, and giving thanks to God in the presence of all he broke it and began to eat” (Acts 27:34-35).

Thanks For Not Giving Us What We Deserve

Taken together, you can see how the tradition arose among Jesus-lovers that whether in public or private, in the company of believers or unbelievers, on land or at sea, in calm or storm, during good times and bad, it is good and right to pause before eating our God-given meal to offer heart-felt thanks to the Creator of heaven and earth. All he owes us is judgment, death, and hell, but instead, for Christ’s sake, we get roast beef, green beans, and mashed potatoes. It’s a good day!

I’m glad I grew up that way and I’m glad to see my grandkids growing up that way too. You may not see bowed heads on magazine covers or television much anymore, and Charles Wilden’s picture isn’t selling like it used to, but praying before eating is an important self-humbling, God-exalting tradition to cherish and pass on to the next generation.