November 2009 Archives

There's an old adage that says, "You can choose your friends; you're stuck with family." Too true, perhaps. We all long for the ideal, whole and functional family, but too often we're "stuck" between fractured and turbulent relationships with those who should be closest to us. For this reason family reunion times like Thanksgiving dinner can be among the most stressful and disappointing seasons of the year: All the more reason to say "Grace" - and mean it.

Prayer before Thanksgiving dinner is part of tradition, for many families. But it can be much more than a ritual. Prayer is our admission that we desperately need God's presence and blessing in our lives. And where more than in our families! Prayer is our fitting way of saying "Thank you" to God for all our blessings and also admitting that without him we're doomed to failure. Nowhere is our ineptitude more evident than in family relationships. For this reason prayer is more necessary for the Thanksgiving meal than turkey and cranberry sauce.

Here's one model for Thanksgiving table prayer for those of us with "less than ideal" family situations.

"God, this is a day for saying 'Thank you,' and acknowledging that you are the source of all the blessings we enjoy. In spite of all the challenges we face, we are richly blessed. 'Thank you.' This is also a time for us to gather as a family and ask for your help and healing. You never promise that our lives will be easy; but you do promise strength, and the wisdom we need to prevail. 'Thank you.' You are welcome here at our table. At times we fall short of being everything you have intended for us. But this is why we pray: to express our gratitude and to ask what we cannot make happen on our own. Bless our conversation, and this food. And when we come back together next year, may we be able to recognize the ways that you have brought us closer - as individuals and as a family - to the destiny you have for us. We say again, ahead of time, 'Thank you,' in Jesus' name."  

The turkey is on the table and everyone is seated. Now what? It's time to say "Grace." Okay... Now what?

Saying "Grace" before the meal, especially a big and important one like Thanksgiving can be laborious and awkward. The cook has to deliver the goods and feels the pressure to perform; so does the designated-pray-er. That too better be good!

Many of us have a hard time praying aloud. Much of our hesitation comes from the universally accepted fact that we really don't know how to "do it right." After all, when we pray, we're addressing the King of the Universe: shouldn't we follow right protocol? We attend worship services and hear "professionals" saying prayers with pomp and words wrapped in high-ordered rhetoric. It's easy to feel like a proper public prayer is beyond our aptitude, so we often avoid it all together... until we're drafted and assigned the task of "saying the prayer" at this Thanksgiving gorge-fest. It's that or washing pots and pans after the feast!

If you're wondering what to say to God this coming Thursday, you're not alone. Over the next few days I'm going to post a few common sense suggestions about "saying Grace."

The first point: Relax.

Yes, relax. There is not a "right way" to pray. Prayer is talking to God and addressing him simply and honestly and directly in your own format. That's all he really wants and expects. Contrary to tradition, prayer is not a performance; it's a dialog, even at the Thanksgiving dinner table. My dear father-in-law was once asked to say the prayer at a family feast. He sat at the end of the table and spoke softly, as he's prone to do. In the middle of his prayer one my wife's brothers - then in his teens - barked out, "Dad, we can't hear you!" He answered, "Well I'm not talking to you," and went right on speaking to God as he saw fit, simply and directly and in his own tone and volume.

In my book (co-authored with Jennifer Schuchmann) "Six Prayers God Always Answers - Results May Vary" I address this question of "prayer performance" straight away.

Prayer doesn't work. God works.

We often get that confused, don't we?

We think there is a certain formula we have to follow--a right way of doing prayer. If we do it right, God answers. It's like using the correct postage after a rate change, the proper stamp ensures delivery. But when our prayers don't get answered, we believe we're somehow at fault. We prayed the "wrong" way. There are lots of ways we could have screwed up--not enough postage (or good deeds), mislabeled the envelope (prayed to God when we should have prayed to Jesus) or forgot to seal it (with a promise to do better next time).

If that's how you think, this isn't the book for you. The authors don't believe in a right way or a wrong way. Yes, biblical literature, church history, and religious traditions present some great guidelines when you need an example to follow, but the truth is, prayer is nothing more than communication with God. Some of us prefer long, elegantly handwritten notes on premium stationery. Others prefer text messages with abbreviated words that aren't grammatically correct (and that parents can't decipher). But regardless of how we pray, it isn't prayer that changes things. It's God who changes things.

Sometimes, we forget that.

We're so caught up in our own, or someone else's, expectations of what prayer looks and smells like, that when we look for God's reply we limit our thinking to a #10 business envelope, when perhaps God is answering us with a marshmallow, an old lady's smile, or something else so completely unexpected that we miss his reply.

Prayer is really a simple matter. Shoot straight and direct. Tell the truth. Use plain language. Be specific. All the ordinary ways that communication works best between persons works best with God as well, even on Thanksgiving.

If you'd like to dive into the conversation with advice or questions or additional resources for "saying Grace" on Thanksgiving, all the better.

Today is the 146^th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's delivery of one of the most sublime and enduring political statements in history: The Gettysburg Address. The 16^th President stood and spoke simply and directly, in just a few short minutes, framing the meaning of the horrible but decisive Civil War battle at Gettysburg. In his words he explains to his war weary nation and the world the meaning of the terrible and bloody conflict.

For Lincoln the War marked history's greatest test determining whether a nation born and borne on the principles of self-government could endure not only external foes - as she had in the Revolution - but dividing internal strife. For Lincoln America was a God-founded nation, "Under God" he calls her. Preserving her unity was for him a calling from God himself. To be so placed - Under God - is to recognize that all our valued rights and the laws that protect them have a higher source and a spiritual accountability. America, Lincoln believed and proclaimed, was a society governed by laws, not men, and those laws derived their power from God and his moral stipulations.

Lincoln in this sense is speaking this great address not only to Americans past and future, but also as a kind of prayer, a declaration to God, that we do not take his gift of trust lightly, and that we will resolve to not let God's great American experiment fall to dust!

Here's Lincoln's Gettysburg "Prayer"  

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

 

Everyone's gathered and waiting. The food is hot and on the table. It's Thankgiving, and dinner time. it's time to pray and say "Thank you" to the One who has given us life and the means to sustain it. How do we put "Thank you" into words? Most people in America pray privately, though a minority now verbalize prayers for meals on an average day. Still, most families who celebrate Thanksgiving dinner will puase for a verbal prayer of Thanks. What to say at such a moment? When our own words fail us, here are few rich examples to draw from.  

Come, Lord Jesus, our guest to be
And bless these gifts
Bestowed by Thee.
And bless our loved ones everywhere,
And keep them in Your loving care.

A Moravian Blessing

 

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the lands!
Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into God's presence with singing!
Know that the Lord is God! It is he that made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him, bless his name!
For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.

Psalm 100

 

"Bless this food and us that eats it."

Cowboy Grace

 

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Blessed are You, O Lord our God, Eternal King,
Who feeds the whole world with Your goodness,
With grace, with loving kindness, and with tender mercy.
You give food to all flesh,
For Your loving kindness endures forever.
Through Your great goodness, food has never failed us.
O may it not fail us forever, for Your name's sake,
Since You nourish and sustain all living things,
And do good to all,
And provide food for all Your creatures
Whom You have created.
Blesses are You, O Lord, Who gives food to all.

A Hebrew Blessing

 

If you know of other Thanksgiving prayers, post them in the comment section below. Someone slated to say "Grace" a week from Thursday may be grateful for a good example they can draw from.

 

Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits-

Who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's...  Psalm 103

Everyone wants the fountain of youth. Supposedly, Ponce de Leon discovered Florida looking for the secret of eternal youth. Millions still go there every January with the same ambition. Yes, staying young is big business.

The Bible has a simpler and cheaper solution: Gratitude and thanks. In his 3,000 year old poem (we call it Psalm 103 in the Bible) King David tells himself to "Praise the Lord," and "don't forget his benefits" - another way of saying, "Be thankful to God." One of the benefits of remembering God's benefits, those things he's already given us, is that our "youth is renewed like the eagle's." In other words, gratitude lifts us above and through the winds of adversity, as an eagle sores through and above the storm. With thankfulness we fly.

There is now scientific evidence to support what David demonstrated so long ago. Thankfulness and gratitude is good for our health. It makes us young again.

Dr. Jeffry Froh, Assistant Psychology Professor at Hofstra University, There may be measurable, scientific benefits to the American tradition of giving thanks. In study of college students Froh found that "Students who counted blessings were less likely to report headaches, stomach aches, pains in the body." Gratitude works. Praising God for his goodness keeps us young... forever! It's literally a "fountain of youth for all eternity!

"God, we thank you for the benefits of life that you have given us. We will not forget that you are the source of all good things. We know that this is not only right to acknowledge - it is the truth - but it is also beneficial to acknowledge. When we give honor to whom honor is due - you - we reap great benefits in our lives. Gratitude rejuvenates our bones and releases our anxieties and worries into your hands. Thank you, God. We say this in Jesus' name."

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I know what you are thinking, "Isn't it a bit early for a Thanksgiving prayer?" But in actuality, Thanksgiving, as we know it, started well before it was a national holiday associated with turkey, football and lethargy. Thankgiving was and is a...