“Gimmie, Gimmie, Gimmie! Give me some more.

Gimmie, Gimmie, Gimmie! Don’t ask what for.”

– Black Flag, “Gimmie, Gimmie, Gimmie”

About a year ago I visited a region where the primary industry is tourism focused on a religious sect whose lifestyle includes rejection of technology that came after the 17th century. No electricity, no combustion engines, no telephones, no modern plumbing. These folks speak their own dialect of Old German and keep to themselves, shunning contact with outsiders as much as possible.

Unsurprisingly, local entrepreneurs promoted this enclave as some sort of tourist destination where visitors are encouraged to drive throughout the vicinity gawking at the locals as if they were some sort of museum exhibit of days long gone.  They made sure to build plenty of shops up and down the main highway to sell souvenirs, “primitive” decor, and opportunities to partake of an interpretation of local cuisine in restaurants that use electricity, refrigeration, and other modern technology.

I get it, everybody wants to make a buck, and if people are willing to buy something, there are always people ready to sell it. That’s the way capitalism works. And yes, there are some problems with capitalism, as with any system, but capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system that ever has existed. Even these museum locals believe this, and many of them have no problem making money from the drive-by gawkers.

One of the places we ate was a buffet style restaurant that billed itself as a “Dinner” (although I had a snowball’s chance in a sauna of getting a Taylor Ham, Egg, & Cheese sandwich, or a Reuben, or Disco Fries in that “Dinner”).  The food was decent, unremarkable, even somewhat tasty. What struck me the most, however, was the placemats on the table. The center of the placemat had an image of hands clasped together as if in prayer, and in each corner of the placemat was a short prayer for what is commonly known as “saying grace,” one Catholic, one Orthodox, one Jewish, and one Protestant.

The Catholic prayer went like this:

“Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Through Christ our Lord. Amen”

The prayer for the Orthodox said this:

“O Christ our God, bless the food and drink of thy Servants. For thou art Holy always, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen”

The prayer marked “Jewish” read:

“Lift up your hands toward the sanctuary and bless the Lord. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who bringest forth bread from the earth. Amen”

And finally, for the Protestants:

“Bless, O Lord, this food to our use. And to us to Thy service, and to make us ever mindful of the needs of others. In Jesus’ name. Amen”

All in all, not too shabby (aside from the slight modifications of archaic 17th century English), these are accurate prayers in common usage that we often find people reciting before they eat. But as I sat down at my table, checking out the placemat while waiting for my coffee, I suffered a savage flashback!

I seemed to be sitting cross-legged on a shag carpet, eating a bowl of Sugar-Coated Choco Bombs, watching television with a bright, upbeat melody emitting from the tiny speaker:

“Three of these things are just like the others,

Three of these things are quite the same,

One of these things is not like the others,

Now it’s time to play our game.”

Yep, I found myself back in my youth watching “Sesame Street”, a program I haven’t watched since I learned that the one known only as “Bert” was seen in Dallas, Texas on the Grassy Knoll in Dealy Plaza on the morning of November 22nd, 1963, and additionally, he can’t account for his whereabouts the night Mr. Hooper disappeared.

But I digress…

So…

Three of these prayers have one thing in common. They ask Papa to “Bless Us” and to bless our stuff, specifically our food. There ain’t nothing wrong with that, after all, being blessed is a good thing, we even bless each other every time somebody sneezes. Being on the receiving end of Father’s blessing is an even better thing.

The fourth prayer, the outlier is different. It says “Lift your hands towards the sanctuary and BLESS THE LORD. BLESSED ART THOU, O LORD OUR GOD…”

What we have here are three suggested placemat prayers saying Gimmie, Gimmie, Gimmie blessings, and one prayer saying Give blessings.

All four of these are good, but they pose a quandary. After all, the apostle Paul in the 20th chapter of the book of Acts clearly states, “…remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive’…” (Acts 20:35). The writer of the book of Hebrews, however, makes it plain that “…it is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior…” (Hebrews 7:7).  What are we supposed to do about these four good prayers that seem to be grounded in seemingly contradicting scriptures?

Way back in the day, right around the time I was still watching Sesame Street (this was before I learned that it was Bert’s White Bronco that O.J. was driving that fateful day in Los Angeles), I had some construction paper, a box of crayons, some macaroni, and some paste. I drew a picture of my Dad, glued some pasta on it, and gave it to him for his birthday. Dad loved it.  He didn’t love it because I was some sort of prodigy who created a magnificent work of art. He loved it because he loved me. Not only that, he loved my expression of love for him. My crayon and macaroni creation didn’t add anything to him in a tangible way, and if I didn’t give him any construction paper artwork, he wouldn’t have stopped blessing me with his love, or ceased from providing food, housing, etc. I didn’t bless my Dad to earn anything, to gain favor, or to get stuff. I did it because he was my Dad, and I loved him.

Consider Psalm 103…

The first 2 verses in the King James Version read:

“Bless the LORD, O my soul:

And all that is within me, bless His Holy Name.

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits…

And from there David goes on to tell us of all the awesome, great, and good things the LORD has done, is doing, and will continue to do. If you haven’t checked it out for a while, now is probably a good time to take another look at it.

The same two verses in the Passion Translation read a bit differently:

“With my whole heart, with my whole life, and with my innermost being,

 I bow in wonder and love before you, the Holy God.

Yahweh, you are my soul’s celebration.

How could I ever forget the miracles of kindness you’ve done for me…”

I am NOT a linguistic scholar by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, I know a smattering of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin because I know how to use a lexicon (I’m also pretty good at cussing in Gaelic, but that’s a matter for another day), but I am not in a position, or mood, to debate about which translation is better, or worse, and why. What I do know, in this instance, the Passion Translation captures most eloquently what it means to bless the Lord.

With that aside, Psalm 103 tells us the answer to the seemingly contradictory quandary.

Yes, we are to bless the Lord…although we are the lesser and He is the greater…and yes, He blesses us as the entirety of the Psalm points out. It’s a cyclical relationship. We bless Him, He blesses us, we bless Him, he blesses us, and so on, and so on, and so on. But we don’t give blessings to Him to get blessings from Him. He doesn’t give blessings to us to get blessings from us.

Love is not transactional. Neither is grace.

Papa blesses us because that is His nature.

We bless Papa because we are created in His likeness and image, so to bless is our nature as well.

We don’t give to get, we give because that’s who we are.

One last thing…

I really don’t write anything with the intent of being in sync with a news cycle, or with a calendar (a brutal sprint to meet a deadline notwithstanding), but this will be published in time for the celebration of our National Day of Thanksgiving. I didn’t plan it that way, it just kind of worked out like that. Since that is the case, if you are the one in your family that gets to “say grace” over the meal this year, I hope this helps you to “say grace” with huge amounts of love and blessings.

Thanks for letting me take up some of your time.