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Lessons About Prayer: Whom Should I Thank?


Lessons About Prayer from the Jewish Culture of Yeshua Series
#1 Whom Should I Thank?

Once a boy who had just eaten lunch turned to his mother and said, “Thank you very much.” But his mother said, “You should not thank me alone, for I only prepared the food.”

The boy wondered, “Whom should I thank?” He went to the grocery store and saw the grocer.  “Thank you, Mr. Grocer, for the very fine bread that I ate at lunchtime.”  “Oh,” said the grocer, “you should not thank me alone. I only sell the bread. I do not bake it.”

So the boy went to the bakery where all the bread was made; and there he saw the baker. “Mr. Baker,” the boy said, “I want to thank you for the wonderful bread that you bake. The baker laughed and said, “I bake the bread, but it is good because the flour is good. And the flour comes from the miller who grinds it.”

“Then I will thank the miller,” said the boy and he turned to leave.   “But the miller only grinds the wheat,” the baker said. “It is the farmer who grows the grain which makes the bread so good.”

So the boy went off in search of the farmer. He walked until he came to the edge of the village and there he saw the farmer at work in the fields. “I want to thank you for the bread that I eat every day.’’

But the farmer said, “Do not thank me alone. I only plant the seed, tend the field, and harvest the grain. It is sunshine and good rain and the rich earth that make the wheat so good.”

“But who is left to thank?” asked the boy, and he was very sad, very tired, and very hungry again, for he had walked a long way in one day.

The farmer said, “Come inside and eat with my family and then you will feel better.”

So the boy went into the farmhouse with the farmer   and sat down to eat with the farmer’s family. Each person took a piece of bread and then, all together, they said, “We thank You, Ο Lord, our God, King of the universe, who bring bread out of the earth.”

And then the boy discovered that it was God whom   he had forgotten to thank. One of the most important reasons we have for praying as Jews is to thank God for His wonderful gifts.  

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Shalom,
Jim Myers


(Source: When a Jew Prays By Seymour Rossel with Eugene B. Borowitz and Hyman Chanover; © 1973 Begrman House, Inc. Publishers, New York, NY; pp. 33-34)

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