Do we see our food as an act of God’s divine providence?

In the modern world, most of us don’t grow the food we eat. We buy the food at the grocery store or have it delivered to our front door.

This distance from the origins of our food can make it seem that humans are self-sufficient, that we do not need God for our “daily bread.”

Yet, as many farmers recognize, the food we grow can be a tricky business and much of the process takes faith.

A farmer doesn’t always know if his seeds will sprout and grow into corn, or if a hail storm will wipe out the crop that is ready to harvest.

The food that we have on our table is truly an act of divine providence.

Pope Benedict XVI reflected on this simple fact in an Angelus message in 2006 on the celebration of Thanksgiving:

In our Christian families, children are taught to always thank the Lord prior to eating with a short prayer and the Sign of the Cross. This custom should be preserved or rediscovered, for it teaches people not to take their “daily bread” for granted but to recognize it as a gift of Providence.

Furthermore, this act of thanking God for our food can spread to other parts of our lives, where we see the hand of God:

We should become accustomed to blessing the Creator for all things: for air and water, precious elements on which life on our planet depends, as well as for the food that through the earth’s fertility God offers to us for our sustenance.

As much as we like to think that we can live without God, the truth is that God holds everything into existence and is the reason behind every blessing in our lives.

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