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In the parsonage home of my childhood in western New York, we didn't eat a bite of supper until Dad or his assigned proxy—Mom or one of us children lining the sides of the oblong table—"said grace." The prayers were predictable and targeted; after all, the topic at hand was food.

A child's first prayer was easy to learn, two lines that always went together because they rhymed, almost: "God is great, God is good. Let us thank him for the food."

I remember my nervous anticipation for days before I first ventured beyond "God is great" to a more substantial mealtime prayer. I'd been listening and learning the cadences and I hoped I was ready. Finally one night Dad called on me, and with no introductory explanation I strung together a bunch of familiar phrases: "At eventide we pause to give you thanks for this food and for the day. … Bless us as we partake of this food that we are about to receive—from your bountiful hand—that we might serve you better." When I finally got to "Amen," I looked up and proudly glanced around the room. Everybody was trying not to laugh.

There were other memorable grace lines, particularly my mother's favorite: "Bless this food to our use." She never forgot the phrasing, though one day she startled me by modifying it midstream. With Dad, I was visiting her in the nursing home after a debilitating and mind-dulling stroke at age 82. Aides had brought a dinner tray to her room and set it on the extended arm of her chair. Dad and I intended to feed her and then go back to his house to eat supper. After adjusting her clothing protector—by all accounts a big bib—Dad asked if Mom wanted to "say grace." "Okay," she said, closing her eyes tight.

Somewhere beneath her mental fog she found grace to alter the line to fit the occasion: "Thank you for this food. Bless it to our—my—use."

I smiled, cheered at her awareness. She knew quite well that she was dining alone. She could thank God for this green cream soup and brown ground sandwich, but not without reminding him and us that she was the only one eating it.

There was one particularly personal grace line reserved for Sunday or holiday dinners: "Bless the hands that prepared this food." That was what Dad added to the prayer when he wanted Mom to understand that he was grateful for the effort required to put out such an impressive spread—turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, two vegetables, hot brown-and-serve rolls, home-canned pickles and relishes, a choice of fresh-fruit pies.

But in recent years, "Bless the hands" has become a humorous postscript to mealtime prayers at family get-togethers feeding four generations. It goes like this. A male member of my generation usually prays, extemporaneously but not unpredictably. He thanks God for his presence, sustenance, and his provisions during the year, then blesses the food to our use and us to God's service. Amen.

Then, in that instant of silence before anyone reaches for a napkin, one of us graying sisters—whose hostess fingers are hardly dry from a final rinse in the kitchen sink—quickly invokes Dad's famous line to force acknowledgment of our labor.

If the first-string pray-er won't ask God to bless our hands, we'll request the blessing on our own. That's how it sometimes is with thanksgiving grace.

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
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Evelyn Bence is the author of Spiritual Moments with the Great Hymns (Zondervan).

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