Gratitude for Grace

Along the Blue Ridge Parkway. In 2014 I drove the whole thing, through Virginia and North Carolina, at the speed limit, 45 MPH. I just needed to be quiet for a while.

A minister friend of mine invited me over for dinner. He cooked, and while his wife and I sat at the table, he served us. I didn’t start eating right away and he said, “You’re waiting for the blessing. You don’t need to do that. The food is already blessed!”

Actually I had been waiting politely for him to be seated, but I didn’t think fast enough to say so, and instead picked up my fork. But you know, there is a whole lot more to say about this.

Certainly a human being is in no way qualified to bless anything; she can only request that God do so. Even so, do we imagine that God waits for our request before he blesses our food? Seems to me that our food is blessed by its very existence. That God provides for us, I am trying to say, is the blessing. But this is a quibble.

Shouldn’t the blessing, or grace, then, be an expression of gratitude? “Give thanks to Him and praise His name,” Psalm 100.  If so, how can anyone but me speak my thanks?

Let me, then, also express my gratitude for the company of an enlightened friend.

I am sure that he would be chagrined at my very non-traditional beliefs—or lack thereof—but no matter. Any human being worthy of the label can and should certainly be grateful for her life, her abilities, and her support by whatever you want to call this infinite environment through which we find ourselves drifting.