For This Food We Are About to Receive…

For this food we are about to receive, we thank Thee, Lord.
—A Christian pre-meal prayer

The picture on the left is of our daughter holding part of our harvest of potatoes from our garden in the woods years ago. I wrote about the garden last week at Cheerful Monk. It was a great family project and we all learned a lot from it. We especially learned to be grateful that we didn’t have to rely on producing our own food for survival… we would have starved to death. The fence in the picture was just one of our attempts to keep the animals out.

I was reminded of this blessing last week when I watched the National Geographic DVD Africa. Among other things the DVD showed the struggles of subsistence farmers. As if the backbreaking labor weren’t enough, some of the farmers had to spend some of their nights banging pots to scare hungry elephants away from the crops. Another family had planted rice and were hoping the rains would come in time so they could produce enough to make it through the winter. Then when some of the rice did grow, they had to stand constant guard during the day, throwing balls of hardened clay to scare the birds away.

YouTube video

And as the Obama family pointed out last Wednesday, the problem of hunger isn’t limited to subsistence farmers. The picture on the left was taken from a YouTube video showing them handing out food to needy people. They do it as a family every year so their children don’t grow up with a feeling of elitism and entitlement. They do it so the girls understand the needs of other people. (They’re also teaching the girls to be contributing members of society by having regular chores to do, and this practice will continue even when they’re in the White House. Good for them!)

Thanksgiving
For Thanksgiving here we had a simple meal served with a huge dose of thankfulness. Do you celebrate Thanksgiving? If so, how do you do it?

The Kitchen Table