People in many religious traditions say a prayer before meals and I’m curious if any of us are modifying our table prayers especially for this week. I can see how it might be appropriate since we’re “raising our consciousness” about how poverty and public policy collide on a very personal and practical level (I mean, what’s more personal than what’s in your belly?) I don’t want to start a religious debate here but heck, we’re sharing recipes, why shouldn’t we also be sharing our prayers?

Since I’m a protestant follower of Christ, I believe that the church is the body of Christ at least until Christ’s return. This means that it’s up to believers to express and establish the peace and the love and justice of the Christ. So I think I’m going to say something like “Help us remember those whose hunger is not satisfied when we leave this table and help us to work your loving presence throughout Creation on their behalf.”

From the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism

he Torah and Jewish tradition are explicit in the command that we feed the hungry and help eradicate hunger from our society. Leviticus 23:22 tells us, “And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger. I the Eternal am your God.” In Isaiah 58:7, God commands us to “share [our] bread with the hungry and bring the homeless into [our] house.” The Jewish tradition mandates us not just to act individually to end hunger, but as a community. The Talmud explains that each Jewish community must establish a public fund to provide food for the hungry, and our sages explain that feeding the hungry is one of our most important responsibilities on earth: “When you are asked in the world to come, ‘What was your work?’ and you answer: ‘I fed the hungry,’ you will be told: ‘This is the gate of the Lord, enter into it, you who have fed the hungry’” (Midrash to Psalm 118:17).