Review and Giveaway: Thanking God with Integrity

It seems fitting to follow yesterday’s post on Saying Grace with a brief book review and giveaway of a short new book from World Vision called Thanking God with Integrity: Table Graces & Scriptures for a World of Need. The book contains 57 table graces. It encourages us to cultivate gratitude, while acknowledging that we live in a world where many are experiencing sorrow, pain, and deprivation.

Thanking God with Integrity is the type of book you’d leave out on your coffee table. It’s small and full of pictures. The contents are divided into three themes: hunger, emergency care, and creation care. The prayers are simple. Here’s a sample from the section on hunger:

Lord, it is appropriate that we give You thanks for this food. Especially in a world of hunger and need, it is fitting to express gratitude.

But how much more fitting is it to express our gratitude through lives of service and sacrifice, so that others may also be fed.

Use this food to strengthen our bodies that will serve You in expressing Your love. May each bite consume us with a passion to help feed others.

Amen.

The section on emergency care seems appropriately weighty, much heavier than the normal grace that is said at a meal. The prayers are entirely appropriate, however, when responding to a disaster like Typhoon Haiyan.

I’ve caught myself saying grace mindlessly more often than I’d like to admit. A volume like this can be a helpful tool in expressing thanks with more thought and awareness of what is happening in the rest of the world. The prayer Jesus taught us, “Give us this day our daily bread,” should lead us to neighborly concern that others be fed as well. Thanking God with Integrity is a good way to not only give thanks more thoughtfully, but also with a greater awareness of the needs of others as well. I’ll be using it with my family.

Thanks to the generosity of World Vision, I have a copy to give away. Please complete the form below between now and Sunday night. I’ll randomly pick one entry on Monday, and send that person a copy of the book.

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