Food is conducive to gratitude. Perhaps gratitude is, in its own right, a type of nourishment. This idea goes back at least as far as the Bible, where eating and giving thanks are often closely linked. When food is paired with the word blessing, the implication is often gratitude. The Greek verb translated "to bless" in the New Testament can easily be rendered "to celebrate with thanks."
On countless occasions, Jesus blessed—or gave thanks for—everything from his food to his friends to his enemies. Most would agree that he did this without any expectation of reciprocity from God, but that it was simply his nature to be thankful. He gave thanks even when those around him might have wondered whether there was anything to be grateful for. And he did, on a couple of occasions, use food almost as a type of instructional tool from which his followers could learn how to be grateful in as sincere a way as he was.
This results of his giving thanks in particular situations tended to turn circumstances upside down. There's the feeding of the five thousand, when a large crowd approaches Jesus at the time of the Passover feast. See John 6:4–13 . Jesus and his disciples can't turn their backs on them. But all they have is five loaves of barley bread and a couple of fish. Jesus, apparently unfazed, has everyone sit down to prepare to be fed. The Gospel records that Jesus does only one thing before distributing the food. He gives thanks.
As the familiar goes, Jesus and the disciple feed all those thousands in need. And, there's plenty left. Here the very presence of food serves as a reminder to be grateful. What's more, it functions as a kind of two-fold sustenance—feeding the people with food as well as representing the spiritual nourishment of gratitude. It's not difficult to imagine that from then on, the disciples might not have looked at the act of eating in the same way again. They had just seen their Teacher turned too little into more than enough, and they themselves would likely end up grateful for this lesson.
In his last supper with these disciples, See Matt. 26:26–28; Mark 14:22–24; Luke 22:19–20 . Jesus again used food as a way to represent gratitude.
This time, it was in the form of bread and wine. As in the earlier episode, he first offers a blessing. [Here again, where the English translators saw fit to use the word bless, the Gospel writers used the Greek word so closely related to "thanks" or "praise.") Then Jesus shares the food with the disciples. The bread and the wine, he explains, are to help them remember him, to never lose sight of how he lived and why he died. And their meal that Passover night may have served as a continual reminder to use gratitude in their own and others' lives, as Jesus did.
Food may be nourishment for the body, but gratitude truly nourishes the soul.
