On the Pope's LatestBenedict VI stressed the educational value of praying and thanking God before meals. “This custom should be preserved or rediscovered, because it teaches one not to take the ‘daily bread’ for granted, but to recognise it as a gift of Providence,” he said. “We should get used to blessing the Creator for everything: for air and water, precious elements that are the basis of life on our planet, as well as for the food that God offers us for our sustenance through the fecundity of the earth.”
When I was a kid, thanking God for meals seemed somehow disingenuous since it seemed like Dad worked awful hard for the money to pay for those meals. Now I've somewhat woken up to the fact that our whole life is a gift and that the earth belongs to God. I also see more clearly how fragile the whole economic system is and how we, in America, are very fortunate to live where food shortages are not a problem. As Amy Welborn, in The
Words We Pray wrote:
There are countless ways to thank God for our food, and by extension our lives...The Torah reveals that the whole earth belongs to God. So before a meal, God is blessed. These prayers are called benedictions; they are prayers of praise and, as one writer puts it, "a way of asking for and receiving God's permission to take and enjoy that which belongs to Him."...Gratitude for a meal is really just an extension of the gratitude we're called to live in all day long.
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