I don’t profess to be an expert on all the rich possibilities for saying Grace before a meal, but I figure I better say something since this type of Group Prayer was missing from my posting history survey I put together late last year.

For an individual:  If you are by yourself for a meal, you should say grace yourself.  No one else is going to do it. Duh.

A more useful discussion would be “who prays at the family table?”  There are lots of potentials. Some options:

• The head of the household
• A designated child
• Each child – this may take a while depending on how many kids you have.
• Everyone all together, holding hands. Everyone needs to know what to say ahead of time for this one.
• Everyone all together, not holding hands
• The head of the household’s spouse
• A guest
• The oldest one present
• Whoever the head of the household picks for that meal

There is a richness to mixing it up a bit.  Our main choices when our Michigan Knapp family gets together have been me, our son Jesse, or 6 year old Molly.

An extra note about the value of saying grace in public:  One time in Washington DC, my wife, daughter and I offered thanks before eating breakfast muffins at an outdoor café.  The lady at the next table said, “you aren’t from around here, are you?”  “No, we’re from Michigan.”  “I thought so.  I haven’t seen anyone pray out loud around here for a long time.”  We had a nice talk with her and felt pretty righteous.