Meal Prayers

The fourth petition:
Give us this day our daily bread.
God certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayer, even to all evil people, but we pray in this petition that God would lead us to realize this and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.

God would lead us to realize this.
and
Receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.

Turn a few pages further back in the catechism, to the section on daily prayers. What is the prayer before meals? Both the psalm verse (and You give them their food at the proper time) and the little prayer (which we receive from Your bountiful goodness) are words which lead us to "realize this."

And the prayer after the meal? Give thanks to the Lord for He is good.

We pray that "God would lead us to realize this" and "God would lead us to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving" and so it is HIS words we use in our meal-time prayers.



I was so tickled and so surprised when I noticed that Luther's words under the Fourth Petition were in sync with the meal prayers. I don't know why I was surprised. Now it seems so obvious. (But I still think it's really cool!)


This discovery is kinda sorta like my shock (and delight) to discover once-upon-a-time that the Close of the Commandments has "fear, love, and trust" in it just like the meaning of the First Commandment does. Maybe I'm just really weird that these things interest me so much.