What’s On Your Plate? The Menu You Didn’t Order

Early this morning I came across a Puritan prayer that settled deep into my thoughts — and it made me ask, ” What’s on your plate right now?”

“Lord, let me sit down to eat with you, and I will never complain about the menu.”

I’m reading through Colossians right now as part of the Bible Reading Challenge, and this prayer felt like it belonged there. Paul writes about Christ being all and in all. About doing everything — everything — with thanksgiving.

And I thought: if Christ Himself is at the table with me, why am I so fixated on what’s being served?

I don’t know what’s on your plate right now. Maybe it’s a health struggle that came out of nowhere. Maybe it’s a financial strain that keeps you up at night. Maybe it’s a relationship that feels impossible, or a calling that’s harder than you imagined.

Whatever it is, I wonder if you’ve had this thought: This can’t be from my loving Lord. This must be from the enemy.

I’ve thought it too.

The Child at the Table

Think about a small child facing a plate of something she does not want to eat. To her, it feels like genuine persecution to be expected to take even one bite of that offensive food.

She shrinks back. She pushes it around the plate. She looks for workarounds — maybe if she hides it under the mashed potatoes, maybe if she feeds it to the dog when no one’s looking.

But the food is still there. Because her father and mother know something she doesn’t: this will nourish her. This will help her grow. Her protests don’t change the fact that they love her and want her good.

I’ll be honest with you — I wasn’t made to eat foods I didn’t like as a child. And while that felt like grace at the time, it created a real struggle. Even now, with refined tastes and a love for most foods, I know that if I were served something I found truly unpleasant, I would struggle to be gracious about it. If I were ever on the mission field, this gap in my training could genuinely hinder the message.

But I’ve watched parents do it differently. I once saw a mother insist her small child eat kale. The child cried through every bite. It might seem harsh in the moment. Years later? That child has no trauma from the experience — just well-developed taste buds and the ability to be socially graceful in any setting. What looked like hardship was actually a gift.

Sometimes the Lord brings a trial into our lives and we respond like that child at the table. We recoil. We look for the workaround. We try to renegotiate the menu.

But it’s still on our plate. Why?

Because your loving Father knows it’s what will bless you.

Gratitude Doesn’t Mean Doing Nothing

Now here’s where I think we can get confused. Accepting what God has placed before us doesn’t mean we sit passively and suffer. The child who finally eats the vegetables isn’t just enduring — she’s participating in her own growth.

Gratitude and action are not opposites. In fact, faithful action is the grateful response.

Let me give you some examples.

Years ago, I discovered that dairy was wrecking my gut and my skin. I could have complained. I could have said, “A loving God wouldn’t take away butter and cheese!” Instead, I accepted the restriction — and then I got to work. I learned about gut healing. I made fermented vegetables. I was patient. For two years I went without dairy while my body healed.

It was hard. I missed cheese. But that restriction was the provision. The “vegetable” I didn’t want to eat was exactly what I needed. And now? I can enjoy those foods again because I did the work.

Or consider a woman who gets a troubling lab result. She can spiral into fear and denial. Or she can say, “Lord, I don’t understand this menu, but I trust You’re at this table with me” — and then take ownership. She cleans up her diet. She addresses her gut health. She makes small, faithful changes. She doesn’t just accept the diagnosis and do nothing. She receives it as an invitation to steward her body well.

The same is true for financial hardship. The income drops. The bills stack up. She can either drown in anxiety, or she can receive this season as an invitation to depend on her Father more deeply — AND make a budget, AND find creative solutions, AND trust that He will provide as she takes faithful steps.

Even in a difficult relationship — a hard marriage, a wayward child, a broken friendship — we can give thanks for how God is refining us through it AND seek wise counsel, set boundaries, pray without ceasing.

Do you see it? Whatever’s on your plate, gratitude doesn’t mean passivity. It means doing the hard thing without resentment. It means picking up your fork and eating the vegetables because you trust the One who served them.

What’s On Your Plate Will Change You

Here’s what I’ve learned: the child eventually develops a taste for what once seemed offensive. But only because she ate it. She participated. She didn’t wait for her preferences to magically change while refusing to take a single bite.

What once felt like persecution becomes provision — but only on the other side of obedience.

What’s the “vegetable” on your plate right now? What has God set before you that you’ve been pushing around, hoping it will disappear?

I want to invite you to do three things:

1. Name it. What is God asking you to receive? Be honest. Write it down if you need to.

2. Give thanks. Even through tears, even when it doesn’t make sense — thank Him for His presence at the table. He is with you. That changes everything.

3. Take one small faithful step. Not twenty steps. Just one. A 1% change in the right direction. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear shows that a 1% improvement each day yields a 37-times improvement over a year. Small, consistent faithfulness compounds.

Maybe that step is finally addressing your gut health. Maybe it’s making an appointment you’ve been putting off. Maybe it’s opening your Bible and sitting with Colossians 3 for a while.

Whatever it is — don’t just stare at the plate. Pick up your fork.

If sitting down at the table with your Lord feels like something you want but don’t know how to begin, I created a free guide just for that: 6 Steps to Power Up Your Prayers.

A Place to Start

If your “vegetable” is a health struggle, I want to help. I am working on a program called Foundations of Vitality to walk women through taking ownership of their health — not with overwhelm, but with small, sustainable steps that honor the body God gave you. Be sure you are on the email list when it comes out.

And if gut health is part of your journey (it usually is), my Everyday Gut Health Checklist is free and gives you nine actions you can take starting today. You can grab it here

I don’t know what’s on your menu right now. But I know Who is sitting at the table with you. And if He’s there, you can trust what He’s served.

Here’s to faithful eating — vegetables and all.

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About the Prayer

The prayer that inspired this post comes from Richard Alleine, a 17th-century English Puritan minister. Here is his original wording from Heaven Opened (1665):

“O, my Lord, let me feed with thee, and I will not complain whatever my fare be. Let my portion be from thy table, and then be it much or little — let me hear thy voice, ‘I am thine, and with me all things,’ — and I am content to be at thy allowance. Let thy deed of gift stand sure to me, and put in my children’s names there, and I ask no more for myself or them.”

Alleine knew something about difficult providences. He served faithfully as rector of Batcombe, Somerset for over twenty years until 1662, when he and two thousand other Puritan ministers were ejected from their pulpits for refusing to conform to the Church of England. Driven from his home by the Five Mile Act, he spent his remaining years preaching in private homes in the Frome area, often fined and harassed for doing so. Yet out of that season of loss and persecution came this prayer of quiet trust: Let me feed with thee, and I will not complain whatever my fare be.

He had tasted the vegetables. And he found them, in the presence of his Lord, to be enough.

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Blessings,

Joanne

P.S. If you need to know more about the power of Christ in you — check out this post