A Remedy for Vague Table Prayers

"I find it easy to slip into vague gratefulness, and vague gratefulness is as hollow as a light bulb. Mostly I notice this at the dinner table with my family. The vague verbiage I speak over our food is a reflection of my vague thoughts about God and his provisions spread across the table. (It’s certainly not a reflection of my wife’s cooking!)

If you find this vaguity in your prayers, Douglas Wilson offers us a remedy in his new bookFather Hunger. In a section on vocation, Wilson points us to look deeper into the gracious provisions from God:

We have to understand that all Christians are called, and are called to labor self-consciously and faithfully in their calling, whether it is law, real estate, carpentry, medicine, brick-laying, shop-keeping, writing novels or songs, digging latrines, or planting trees. All of God is in all of it.

We must fix it in our minds that God is in everything, and works through everything. This means that Christ is hidden in the artisan, and Christ is hidden in the customer. Christ is hidden in the one behind the counter, and He is hidden in the one in front of the counter. He is hidden in the dentist, and hidden in the patient in the chair.

God provides for us through means. We benefit from the work of the farmer, the fertilizer salesman, the trucker, the grocery store clerk, and the dairyman; and when we bow our heads to thank God for the breakfast cereal, we are thanking Him for His work in all of these people, whether they know Him or not. We receive from God through the work of others. We acknowledge this when we pray for our daily bread (Matthew 6:11). We know that God is working in and through all things (Romans 8:28), and this includes countless daily kindnesses. When we thank the Lord for the cereal, we should know that we are thanking Him for the whole supply chain, and not just for the full bowl in front of us.

Reading that quote changed my next dinner time prayer.

Instead of a vague prayer for the provisions, I gave thanks to the God who channeled his grace to us through a supply line of farmers who awake early in the morning to study the heavens and to crank cold tractor motors, through the factory workers with ID badges who wear gloves and goggles and package food every day, through the unshaven truckers who speed rigs across the country in a race against expiration dates, and through the grocery store stockers who organize and arrange all that food on shelves while most of us are asleep.

God wants you to enjoy breakfast, and he has ordained, called, and equipped certain specific men and women to make sure you do. Similarly, he has ordained and called and equipped us to return the favor to our neighbors. We all play different roles in the world, but we are knit together in God’s network of common grace.

But the point here is that the men and women in this supply line have all been ordained, called, equipped, and preserved by God because God knows your name, he knows your tastes, he loves you, and because he wants you to enjoy a bowl of breakfast cereal in his name."

Tony Reinke, Desiring God

Psalms 8

O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Lasting Impreggsions

During dinner today, we had 계란찜, a dish where eggs are beaten, diluted with water, and heated to form a fluffy egg dish. I was mindlessly gulfing down the favorite dish when my mom shared with me a small piece of her childhood, about how eggs meant more than simply eggs when she was a little girl.

"Only the richer families could afford eggs," she had said. "For the rest of us, eggs were too expensive for a child to take as a school lunch."

"There was one day, though, when everyone would bring hard-boiled eggs--field trip days. It was customary to pack boiled eggz and cider for a field trip."

After a long pause, she continued, "Your grandmother never let me go on field trips. She said that the boiled egg and cider were too expensive. I never was allowed to go."

A tinge of sadness betrayed her smile.

"My friend who sat next to me in class always told me I should go. 'Just go on the field trip! I'll share my lunch with you,' she would say. But I never went."

"I wonder what happened to that friend. I wonder what she's doing right now."

Psalms 51

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners will be converted to You.

v. 10-13

Something Serious

"If a sheep eats bushes, does it eat flowers, too?"

"A sheep eats whatever it finds."

"Even flowers that have thorns?"

"Yes. Even flowers that have thorns."

"Then what good are thorns?"

I didn't know. At that moment I was very busy trying to unscrew a bolt that was jammed in my engine. I was quite worried, for my plane crash was beginning to seem extremely serious, and the lack of drinking water made me fear the worst.

"What good are thorns?"

The little prince never let go of a question once he had asked it. I was annoyed by my jammed bolt, and I answered without thinking.

"Thorns are no good for anything--they're just the flowers' way of being mean!"

"Oh!" But after a silence, he lashed out at me, with a sort of bitterness. "I don't believe you! Flowers are weak. They're naive. They reassure themselves whatever way they can. They believe their thorns make them frightening..."

I made no answer. At that moment I was thinking, if this bold stays jammed, I'll knock it off with the hammer. Again the little prince disturbed my reflections.

"Then you think flowers..."

"No, not at all. I don't think anything! I just said whatever came into my head. I'm busy here with something serious!"

He stared at me, astounded.

"'Something serious'!"

He saw me holding my hammer, my fingers black with grease, bending over an object he regarded as very ugly.

"You talk like the grown-ups!."

That made me a little ashamed. But he added, mercilessly:

"You confuse everything...You've got it all mixed up!" He was really very annoyed. He tossed his golden curls in the wind. "I know a planet inhabited by a red-faced gentleman. He's never smelled a flower. He's never looked at a star. He's never loved anyone. He's never done anything except add up numbers. And all day long he says over and over, just like you, 'I'm a serious man! I'm a serious man!' And that puffs him up with pride. But he's not a man at all--he's a mushroom!"

"He's a what?"

"A mushroom!" The little prince was now quite pale with rage. "For millions of years flowers have been producing thorns. For millions of years sheep have been eating them all the same. And it's not serious, trying to understand why flowers go to such trouble to produce thorns that are good for nothing? It's not important, the war between the sheep and the flowers? It's no more serious and more important than the numbers that fat red gentleman is adding up? Supposed I happen to know a unique flower, one that exists nowhere in the world except on my planet, one that a little sheep can wipe out in a single bite one morning, just like that, without even realizing what he's doing--that isn't important?" His face turned red now, and he went on. "If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself, 'My flower's up there somewhere...' But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it's as if, suddenly, all the starts went out. And that isn't important?"