Having a meal time prayer is a great tradition. It’s also a good habit to thank God for meals before consuming them, even though in some cultures, it is considered much more polite to thank God for a meal after the meal is eaten. However, it can be an important tradition to ask God to purify a meal, bless a meal or help a meal to properly nourish our bodies. Obviously, for the prayers that mention Jesus, Christ or Son, they are meant for Christian use. However, both Jews and Christians (and perhaps even other religions) can use prayers that simply use “God.”
I grew up Lutheran and I learned a prayer that is traditional for Lutherans to use before meals. I was taught to pray the following prayer before having a meal.
Come Lord Jesus, be thou our guest, and let thy gifts to us be blest. Amen.
Years later, when with another group of Lutherans, I finally learned more of an ending to the prayer that makes it seem even more like a meal time prayer.
Come Lord Jesus, be thou our guest, and let they gifts to us be blest and may there be a goodly share on every table everywhere. Amen.
However, some of the most fun prayers are the ones I learned either in youth groups or for youth groups. They can be used at any time, though.
There’s the Johnny Appleseed prayer. This is the song from the Disney movie. It is a lot of fun, because you hold hands and swing them to the music. You repeat the Amens and at the very last Amen, the “Ah” is held and the hands are raised up into the air during that part and then put down when the “men” is said.
Here’s that prayer.
Oh, the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord for giving me the things I need, the sun, and the rain, and the apple seed. The Lord is good to me. Amen. Amen. Amen, amen, amen. A-men!
There’s the obvious little prayer that many children know.
God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food. Amen.
However, this can be made into the Flintstones prayer. You sing the prayer, as follows, to the Flinstones theme song tune. Then you scream the Amen just like Fred screams “Wilma!” at the end of the theme song.
Here’s how the words to that prayer go. I’ll spell them out phonetically where they need to be stretched in the theme tune to help you figure out how to sing the prayer.
God is gray-ate. God is goo-ood and we thank Him for our food. God is gray-ate, God is goo-ood and we thank Him for our, and we thank Him for our, and we thank Him for our food! Amen!
Of course, if you know any prayers, you can be creative and try to fit them into tunes that your children or teens like and they likely be more likely to pray!
