Grace

Yesterday while I was at the grocery store on my day off getting soup for the next two weeks at work a random memory crossed my mind. That of a picture. An old man praying over a small loaf of bread, a bowl of what looks like tomato soup, with a bible and glasses just beyond that on a small table.

You can tell from the picture that the man wasn't wealthy and had heart full of gratitude and thanksgiving. He looked like a kind man with a white beard and very grandfatherly. Perhaps he was having his one meal of the day, perhaps not, we don't know. This picture hung over my grandparents table for decades. I saw it many times and stared at it for hours.

Was the man alone? Possibly, the table is very small and a man like this would have prepared a different meal if he had had a wife if not would have given her the food over himself.

I looked up the picture, and it is an actual picture and not a painting as I learned later. It's called Grace, it was shot in Bovey, Minnesota in 1918 by Eric Enstrom. The old man was Charles Wilden, a peddler who had called on Eric Enstrom that day.

What resulted was this famous picture. Honestly all of these years I thought it was a painting. Had no clue it was an actual picture. Enstrom's daughter did start painting them in oils later on though and perhaps the portrait I saw over my grandparents table was a print of the painting.

Regardless it was something special and reminds us that we do have a lot to be thankful for even in the toughest of times. If not you it does remind me of that fact and it is something I do try to live by, mostly failing but sometimes succeeding.