Prayers before meals: classic graces and short ones for every table
The graces Christians have said for centuries and where they came from, simple ones for children, and a prayer for the Thanksgiving table.
The MySavior teamUpdated · 10 min read
The eyes of all look to You, and You give them their food in season.
Psalm 145:15 · BSB
When you eat and are satisfied, you are to bless the LORD your God for the good land that He has given you.
Deuteronomy 8:10 · BSB
A prayer before meals, usually called grace, is a short word of thanks to God before you eat. The best-known in English is the Catholic one: “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Most of us picked up grace without thinking about it, at a grandmother’s table or a church camp, mumbled between finding a fork and passing the potatoes. It deserves a second look. For many Christians it is the prayer they say most often, and it is usually said in a hurry, with the food going cold.
Below are the traditional graces Christians still say and where each one came from, the verses behind the habit, simple graces for children, a few short ones in plain words, and a fuller prayer for Thanksgiving Day.
Where saying grace comes from
Deuteronomy 8:10
When you eat and are satisfied, you are to bless the LORD your God for the good land that He has given you.
Deuteronomy 8:10 · BSB
Moses said this to a people who had eaten manna in the desert for forty years and were about to sit down to bread from their own fields. The danger he saw was not hunger. It was forgetting: full plates, solid houses, and no memory of who gave them. Jewish tradition still draws its grace after meals, the Birkat Hamazon, from this verse.
The English word comes the long way round, from the Latin gratiarum actio, “an act of thanks.” To say grace is to remember, before the first bite, that the food is a gift.
What Jesus did at table
Jesus gave thanks before he broke the bread
All four Gospels tell the feeding of the five thousand, and all four slow down at the same moment. Before anyone eats, Jesus prays. Matthew puts it simply: “Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, He spoke a blessing.”
On the evening of the resurrection, two disciples walked about seven miles to Emmaus beside a stranger. They only knew him at their own table: “He took bread, spoke a blessing and broke it, and gave it to them.” And in Acts 27, after two weeks adrift in a storm, Paul stood on a ship about to run aground and said grace in front of 276 frightened people: “Paul took bread and gave thanks to God in front of them all.” Then everyone ate.
The Catholic grace
Bless us, O Lord
Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Traditional Catholic grace
This is the grace many Catholic children know before they can read. It begins and ends with the sign of the cross, and many families now say “your gifts” and “your bounty” in place of the older “Thy.” Notice what it asks: not only that the food be blessed, but that we be blessed along with it.
It has a companion for after the meal, less known and worth bringing back: “We give Thee thanks, Almighty God, for these and all Thy gifts, which we have received through Christ our Lord. Amen.”
The Lutheran table prayer
Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest
Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed. Amen.
The Common Table Prayer
Lutherans call this the Common Table Prayer, and it rhymes in the original German too: “Komm, Herr Jesu, sei unser Gast.” It is often credited to Martin Luther, but it appears nowhere in his writings. The earliest printing anyone has found is in a 1698 schoolbook for children by Johann Conrad Quensen, so it may have been a children’s prayer from the start.
It asks for one thing before the food: that Jesus would come and sit down with you. Every meal becomes a meal with a guest.
The Methodist grace
Be present at our table, Lord
Be present at our table, Lord; be here and everywhere adored; these mercies bless, and grant that we may feast in paradise with Thee.
John Cennick, 1741
John Cennick was a young English preacher who worked with the Wesleys before joining the Moravians, and he published this grace in 1741. It fits the Old Hundredth, the tune many churches use for the Doxology, so plenty of families sing it rather than say it. It is still in the United Methodist Hymnal.
The last line looks past the plate to a table nobody has sat at yet: the feast in paradise. An ordinary Tuesday supper becomes a small rehearsal for it.
Luther’s table verse
Psalm 145:15
The eyes of all look to You, and You give them their food in season.
Psalm 145:15 (BSB)
In his Small Catechism of 1529, Martin Luther gave households a simple order for meals. Come to the table with folded hands and say this verse and the next one, “You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” Then pray the Lord’s Prayer and a short blessing. After the meal, he had them say the line that opens Psalm 136: “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good. His loving devotion endures forever.”
A child can learn it in a week, and it says the whole thing in one line: every creature is waiting on God, and he does not forget any of them. To keep it in front of you between meals, MySavior’s wallpaper maker can write it over a photograph for your Lock Screen, like the phone below.
Sunday, November 8
9:41
The eyes of all look to You, and You give them their food in season.
Psalm 145:15 · BSBTurn this verse into your Lock Screen wallpaperWrite it over a photograph in MySavior’s wallpaper maker and save it to Photos at the size of your iPhone’s screen.
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What a blessing does
1 Timothy 4:4–5
For every creation of God is good, and nothing that is received with thanksgiving should be rejected, because it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
1 Timothy 4:4–5 · BSB
Paul was writing against teachers who forbade marriage and told believers to stay away from certain foods. His answer is generous. Food is God’s creation, it is good, and thanksgiving is how we receive it. Grace does not turn dinner holy by some trick of words. It receives the meal as what it already is: a gift from a good Father.
That is also why no meal is too small for it. Toast eaten standing at the counter counts. So does a sandwich in the car.
A Scottish grace
The Selkirk Grace
Some hae meat an canna eat, and some wad eat that want it; but we hae meat, and we can eat, and sae the Lord be thankit.
Traditional Scots grace
Robert Burns is said to have spoken this at a dinner given by the Earl of Selkirk, which is how it got its name. It was known well before him, though, as the Galloway Grace or the Covenanters’ Grace. Scots still say it at Burns Suppers every January.
In plain English: some have food and cannot eat, some could eat and have nothing, but we have food and can eat, so thank the Lord. Four short lines, and it remembers the sick and the hungry before it gets to us.
For children
God is great, God is good
God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food. By His hands we all are fed; give us, Lord, our daily bread. Amen.
Traditional children’s grace
No one seems to know who first wrote this one. It travels from Sunday school to kitchen table, and children love it because it rhymes and it ends quickly. The last line borrows from the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.”
A few things help at home. Let a different child lead each night. Hold hands around the table. Once in a while, before the “Amen,” ask everyone to name one thing from their day they are thankful for. And for a three-year-old, this is a whole grace: “Thank you, God, for my food. Amen.”
Many children also learn the “Johnny Appleseed” grace at camp. That song comes from Disney’s 1948 film Melody Time, written by Kim Gannon and Walter Kent, and it is still under copyright, so it is not printed here.
For ordinary days
Short graces in your own words
Lord, thank you for this food and for this hour together. Bless the hands that grew it and the hands that cooked it, and make us ready to share what we have. Amen.
Grace does not need old words. Here are a few more for the days that do not look like a holiday:
Eating alone: “Jesus, sit with me. Thank you for this meal. Amen.”A rushed lunch: “Father, thank you for food and for a minute to stop. Amen.”After a hard day: “Lord, I am tired, and you still fed me. Thank you. Amen.”With guests: “God, thank you for this food and for every person at this table. Make us good company for each other. Amen.”For the Thanksgiving table
A grace for Thanksgiving Day
Father, before we eat, we stop to thank you. For this food and all the work behind it, for the people around this table and the ones we miss today, for every mercy this year, the ones we noticed and the ones we did not: thank you. Make us grateful, and make us generous. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Thanksgiving falls on Thursday, November 26, 2026, and for many families it is the one meal of the year when somebody is asked to say grace out loud. If that somebody is you, this prayer takes about twenty seconds. Leave a short pause after “the ones we miss today” so people can say a name, quietly or aloud.
For verses to read before or after the meal, see our Thanksgiving Bible verses. And MySavior’s Christian Countdown widget can keep the day in view on your Lock Screen; Thanksgiving is one of the 30 feasts it counts down to.
A small practice for this week
Pick one grace from this page and say it before every meal for seven days, the same words each time, out loud if you are eating with someone. Write it on a card and leave it by the salt if that helps. By the end of the week it will be yours. On the seventh day, after the familiar words, add one sentence of your own: one thing you are thankful for that you did not notice on the first day.
Keep thanks close between meals
Bible verse and prayer widgets you design yourself, a countdown to the feasts of the year, and a saint for every day.
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Questions
What is a short prayer to say before meals?
One of the shortest is the Lutheran Common Table Prayer: “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed. Amen.” The Catholic “Bless us, O Lord” is nearly as short. A grace in your own words is just as real: “Thank you, Father, for this food. Amen.”
What is the Catholic prayer before meals?
Before eating: “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.” After eating: “We give Thee thanks, Almighty God, for these and all Thy gifts, which we have received through Christ our Lord. Amen.” Both are begun and ended with the sign of the cross.
Why do Christians say grace before eating?
Because Jesus did: he spoke a blessing before feeding the five thousand and before breaking bread at Emmaus (Matthew 14:19, Luke 24:30). Scripture also tells God’s people to bless him for the food he gives (Deuteronomy 8:10), and Paul says food is “sanctified by the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:5).
What is a good grace for kids?
“God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food. By His hands we all are fed; give us, Lord, our daily bread. Amen.” It rhymes, it is short, and children can lead it themselves. Letting each child add one thing they are thankful for makes it their own.
Which Bible translation is quoted here?
Every Bible verse in this article is quoted from the Berean Standard Bible (BSB). The traditional graces are given in their usual English wording.
