Dinnertime at the Hannon household is usually exciting. Quinn, you see, is a huge fan of early bird specials. By 4:30pm she’s hungry, and by 5pm she’s letting us know it. That means dinner hits the table exceptionally early. When you couple that with a schedule that keeps me running out in the evenings to head to meetings, confirmation, or counseling sessions you get a dinner table with a lot of moving parts, literally. With that said, no matter how crazy our dinner table can get we always make an effort to give thanks together. For Quinn’s sake, we keep it simple saying, “Dear God, thanks for the food. Amen.”
But the problem with a dinner table that’s as crazy as ours is that sometimes the prayer can get lost even when you make your best attempt. Quinn was the one who pointed this out to us. A few months ago about half way through our dinner Quinn looked at Carol and I and boldly exclaimed, “I forgot to pray!” She clasped her hands and said, “Thank you, food. Amen.” Apparently we had made such a habit of forgetting to pray before we ate that, “We forgot to pray” actually became part of our grace in Quinn’s mind. And apparently the one who needed to be thanked was the chicken nugget sitting on her plate.
That scene got me thinking about how we treat thankfulness in our adult lives as well. I wonder, what are all the other things I’m forgetting to pray for but don’t have a 2 year old to remind me? How often do I take my vehicles for granted or even complain about them because they’re a decade old when I should be thanking God that I can go anywhere I want? How often do we forget that our jobs, even when they eat our time and build our stress, are opportunities for us to provide for ourselves and our families? How often do we forget to thank God for our comfortable and warm homes, for the companionship of our family and friends, and for the daily bread we receive each day? In our modern lives it’s very easy to forget to pray.
And that’s only the first half of the problem. The other thing Quinn showed me was how quick we are to misplace our gratitude. She prays, “Thank you, food. Amen.” And why not? It must even look like we are talking right to it when we bow our heads to give thanks! But while I know that Quinn will catch on, I do worry that we do the same thing. We sit on our couches at night to unwind in front of our 42-inch LED TVs and think, “Thank you, cable.” We treat ourselves to shopping sprees and think, “Thank you, money.” We misplace our thanksgiving.
But Lent, this season we are beginning, is about looking more closely at God’s love for us and his will for our lives. It’s about recommitting ourselves to the practices of thankfulness, charity, prayer, and good works. And God, he does not simply want us to take these things on for his sake. God does not need our gratitude or our money. God wants us to take these things on for our sake. Because just like we will more fully enjoy the blessings of our dinner tables when we take the time to give thanks to God for them, so too we will more fully experience the abundant life Jesus lived and died to give us when we pattern our lives in that same sacrifice and thanksgiving.
So this Lent may we learn from Quinn. May we not neglect to give thanks. May we give thanks for our food, for our family, for our homes, for our world, and above all for the love of a God who stops at nothing to bring us life. And when we do give thanks, may we remember where to send it.