When I was growing up, grace was a mandatory requirement before I was ever allowed to take a single bite of my food when the family came together for every meal. Ironically, that grace was always the same and was actually performed as a song, if you can believe that. I’m not even sure to this day how it came to be, but I tend to believe it was a concoction of a child’s prayer and something my parents made up. And it went as follows:
“God is great, God is good, and we thank Him for our food. We’re gonna thank him morning, noon, and night, we’re gonna thank our Lord, cause he’s out of sight, Amen ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch, do do do do…”
It’s amazing to think back now and remember the countless meals in which my family truly did sing that grace. At the time I hated every second of it and as soon as I left home at the age of 18, I stopped saying any type of prayer altogether before all of my meals. For the next 20 years, the only time I ever revisited a blessing prior to eating was often only to impress those I was spending time with. During those moments, I’d ask everyone at the meal to hold hands where I would then come up with some type of prayer to bless the food as well as everyone present. Normally that effort was met with general uncomfortability as I found that many people never did grace at their meals either, even if they did have some type of faith in a Higher Power. But regardless, my intentions for most of those prayers I did here and there over the course of two decades were never pure.
When I began to find humility in my life through all the pain and suffering I started going through in my mind and body, my view on saying grace went from being a self-seeking option to one of a pure desire to do so at all times. Much of that is in part due to the knowledge I have today of some of the World Hunger Statistics.
Here are the most alarming statistics I found that relate to world hunger for 2013:
1. Total number of children that will die this year from hunger – 1.5 million.
2. Percent of world population considered to be starving right now – 33%.
3. Total number of people who will die today from hunger – 20,864.
4. Total number of people who are currently suffering from hunger and malnutrition – 800 million.
5. Time between deaths of people who die from hunger – 3.6 seconds.
My Higher Power, or God as I see fit to label now, has shown me how far I’ve been from ever falling into one of those statistics at any point in my life. Since I was a child, I have never, ever, gone hungry unless I chose to fast for any period of time. I’ve even been privileged enough to dine out quite a bit throughout my life at various eating establishments. Thankfully, there was another good behavior in addition to grace that my family taught me about food when I was growing up. That behavior was to always eat everything that was put in front of me. They used to say there were starving people in China when I left anything on my plate. And the ironic thing is how close that was to the truth back then and really still is in this world as you can see with those World Hunger Statistics.
I’m grateful that God has helped me to develop more humility as well as love and compassion for everyone and everything, because that has led me to wanting to say grace at each of my meals now just like I did as a kid. Only now, I really do what to say it. While I don’t sing my grace anymore, I do make it a point to always bless not only the food in front of me and anyone else dining with me, but also for all those people in this world who are going without food at that very moment. I also make it a point to help out where I can when I see people around me begging or if I am anywhere there is a container collecting money for hunger. It’s not my place to judge where exactly that money I donate is used, I just have faith that somehow I’m doing my part for God to help in the world hunger crisis.
So it’s my desire for anyone reading this, that the next time you are about to put all that food in your mouth that’s sitting in front of you ready to be eaten, that you will take a moment, breathe, and say some type of a quick grace. Try to remember all those people out there, especially the young children, who will die today because they were malnourished. And at the end of your meal, try saving your leftovers to eat at a later date, as what you might throw away is probably more than any of what those starving people will ever eat in a week. Hunger is a real problem in this world, and saying grace at your meals can be just the beginning to having a little more gratitude for the fact that your not starving like 1 in 3 people in this world currently are…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
