All creatures look to you to give them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. Psalm 104-27-28
The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. Psalm 145:15–16
“It is the aim of mature materiality to invite an intentional and disciplined regard for food that is fully attentive to the entire food process of production, distribution, and consumption. In such an awareness, there need be no more selfish “innocent” accumulation of food, for now food takes on marking as a sacramental process.
Food is a sign of the generous abundance of the giving creator. Given that awareness, we are more fully prepared to resist agricultural industrialization and its accompanying chemicals, to resist privilege and entitled access to food for the powerful and wealthy, to resist ideologies of indulgent domination.
For these reasons, table prayers (as both affirmation and resistance) are compellingly appropriate. Such prayers constitute a powerful act of gratitude, acknowledging before we eat that food is a gift that must be received in ways congruent with the God who gives food. In the book of Psalms we are offered two table prayers that fully recognize God as source of our food:
These all look to you to give them their food in due season; when you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. Psalm 104:27–28
The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing. Psalm 145:15–16
These utterances are recognitions that food is not produced by us; it is not to be distributed according to our entitlements or appetites; and it is not to be consumed with indifferent self-indulgence. Our prayers of gratitude affirm that we eat in the presence of the God who gives bread to the eater and in the presence of the neighbors whom God loves as God loves us.”
Walter Brueggemann in Materiality As Resistance: Five Elements for Moral Action in the Real World (Louisville: WJKP, 2020), 37-38.
I put the Scriptures in there twice today to drive home the sacramental point they make. Having spent three weeks in contexts where so many people experience hunger each day, I feel convicted of my ignorance and selfish sins linked to food.
I cannot claim innocence linked to the accumulation of food now that I have come to grasp the impact of the production, distribution, and consumption of food in America. I am asking God how this learning must change my living.
Join me in abandoning self-indulgence and instead embracing sacramental gratitude for God’s provision of food supplied not by my hand but His, not procured by my power but His, and not bestowed for my benefit but for all people.