Another perspective on Giving Thanks

I went out for coffee with my friend Willard yesterday afternoon. Because Willard lives in Ontario, we don’t see each other often and this was the first time we meet in person after he experienced the earthquake in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti last month. Willard works for World Vision Canada and was on a partnership tour with church leaders from Atlantic Canada in Haiti. The hotel in which they were staying was damaged but they were not injured. Because someone at the hotel had some emergency medical training in their background, word went out that there was a doctor at the hotel and Willard and his colleagues were faced with streams of injured people coming to them for help. They tore lots of bedsheets to make bandages but Willard said in email that it was such a helpless feeling to face such an overwhelming need to which he could not fully respond.

I’ve known for a long time that Willard is a person of generous heart and spirit. He feels experiences deeply and reaches out in whatever ways he can to help. Over the years as a pastor, and now working for World Vision, he has done mission trips to many places of incredible need. The impact of these trips led him to produce a small volume of table graces for World Vision called “Thanking God with Integrity: Table Grace in a world of hunger.” He writes in the introduction, “when sensitized to the global inequity concerning access to food, simply thanking God for ‘our’ food feels terribly inadequate.” Acknowledging this, Willard has written these prayers to express thankfulness in light of a celebration of response and purpose.
Here is one of the prayers from his book:

Lord grant that we may eat this food in peace;
guarded from guilt and protected from shame.
Cause this food to become nutrients that
feed the spirit of generosity and sustains a life of service.
Then, Oh Lord, we receive this food not only in peace
but in true worship.
Amen.

What do you think about giving thanks?