PRAYERS AROUND YOUR DINNER TABLE

By Jill Roberts and Michael Canalé

 

First, Michael and I are so very thankful for you, the readers of our blog. Thank you for your encouragement, as you write comments at the website and as you text and email us about the blog. Your insights are amazing and guide us in our choice of subjects for future editions.

 

We decided to take a one-week hiatus and pause for prayers of thanksgiving. What follows are ideas for your prayer or saying grace before Thursday’s feast. We will share a particularly meaningful prayer that we found after some internet research as well as prayers that both Michael and I wrote for this blog. We will end with a prayer so moving and true that it has been passed down through the generations of my family and to you on this day.

 

May God bless you during this season of gratitude and love.

 

We’ll begin with a prayer which captured our hearts while searching online for inspired thoughts to lift up to God:

 

“A Thanksgiving Day Prayer

O Heavenly Father: we thank Thee for food and

remember the hungry. We thank Thee for health

and remember the sick. We thank Thee for

friends and remember the friendless. We thank

Thee for freedom and remember the enslaved.

May these remembrances stir us to service.

that Thy gifts to us may be used for others.

Amen.”

 

“Dear Abby” Columnist

 

Michael reminds us of past thanksgivings when so many of us were in a pandemic lockdown and, therefore, not able to share our Thanksgiving dinner with each other. How truly blessed we are this year. Michael writes:

 

“Dear Lord,

Thank you for the opportunity to be joined again, to safely bring family and friends together today. Amen.”

 

He goes on to say in his next prayer,

 

“Heavenly Father,

We are thankful for the memories we hold so dear to heart.

Thank you for the memories that keep us from growing apart.

Thank you that we are able to share the memories of family and friends. Amen.”

 

Michael and I have studied that Aristotle called memory the “scribe of the soul.” How beautiful this thought is; how our memories resonate with these profound words.

 

I wrote this prayer:

 

“Dear Lord,

Thank you that in our lives, we are not adrift, that we are not rudderless vessels but see You, our North Star, guiding us every moment through smooth waters and through storms, safely carrying us home. Amen.”

 

I also wrote,

 

“Our God,

Thank you for beautiful transitions and how you are an adventure for our souls. Amen.”

 

Michael writes,

 

“Our Lord,

Thank you for sharing and caring and how You keep us conscious in both. Thank you for the young and the old. Amen.”

 

I wrote,

 

“Mighty God,

Thank you for purpose in our lives as we serve Your Kingdom on Earth. Amen”

 

The following is a collaborative prayer that Michael and I wrote and want to share with you and pray for you:

 

“Jesus, we thank you for peace, the kind Paul wrote of in Philippians 4:7, the kind that “passes all understanding.” This peace is a lack of war within our souls, our desires, our hopes, our plans, our dreams. It goes beyond the breakwater of life, out into a tranquil sea that transcends everything else. It is what satisfies all that we are or ever hoped to be. It is profound and can bring tears to our eyes when experienced. It can sometimes come to us when, into our visage, we first see the glint, the gleam, sure to rise up and envelope us in light. Dear God this is our wish for everyone who sits around this Thanksgiving table. From our lips to Your ears. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”

 

Sweet, dear readers, if you have a special prayer or Thanksgiving tradition, Michael and I would be overjoyed if you would share it in the Comment section of this blog. We know that all who read this blog would appreciate this.

 

To close out this holiday blog, I would like to share the prayer of my Grandfather White, the prayer that I most remember from my childhood. A little background: J. Paul White was a theologian and a farmer. As to the first, he had a Masters degree in theology from the University of Chicago. He read the Bible in Hebrew and Greek. In 1917, he bought a farm in Kensett, Arkansas. It is still farmed by my family and is a Century Farm. After lunch, everyday, we always knew he would be sitting and reading Scripture. He was the most learned Biblical scholar I have ever known. Now to his prayer – yes, his singular prayer. It never varied. I didn’t understand it until I became a student of the Bible myself. This was it:

 

“Dear Lord,

Thank you for the association. Amen.”

 

I wondered about it throughout my childhood and early adulthood. Then, one day, after I had found the Lord, I began to at least scratch the surface of its brilliance. It was vertical in that it encompassed the association of mankind to God, and it was horizontal in that it contemplated man’s association to our fellow man. In its few words, it said it all. All his study of Scripture in the original languages, all his extra biblical scholarship, every University of Chicago lecture he had ever heard, came down to this. Today, he has received his Heavenly reward and his prayer lives on.

 

So, thank you friends and family, far and near, young and old. Happy Thanksgiving and thank you so much, thank you for the association.

 

Jill and Michael