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Heav'nly Father, Grant Your Blessing

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Description

This one-verse hymn text that can be sung to the popular tune LAUDA ANIMA (a well-known text to this tune is "Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven") is designed for singing at meal times. Before each meal it is traditional for Christians to pause and give thanks for the blessing of food: the sustenance that it provides as well as the enjoyment of it. We humbly offer this text, based on one by Charles Spurgeon, as a possible family tradition in your household. The Ward family has already adopted it and has even had several chances to sing it for extended family, giving witness of our faith (as well as the children's singing abilities!). In this song we not only ask God for the traditional blessing but move on to remember that we are fed by God, not by our own hands. Though our food is harvested, shipped, and prepared by men, God is the one who ultimately causes it to grow and gives each man the ingenuity, limbs, and muscles to do their jobs. What's more, man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8:3) So God Himself is our true food, not the physical food set before us. Lastly, we sing as a family that we never want to forget the true significance of food: it points to our need for more than just physical bread but living bread, Jesus Himself. John 6:51: "I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh."

Lyrics

(Show Original Wordings)

Heav’nly Father, grant Your blessing / Heavenly Father, grant Thy blessing
On the food before us spread. / On the food before us spread,
All our tongues are now confessing: / All our tongues are now confessing,
By Your hand alone we’re fed. / By Thy hand alone we’re fed,
Never let us be forgetting: / And Thou givest,
Jesus is our Living Bread. / Best of all, the living bread.

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