With Thanksgiving coming soon, along with the hustle and bustle of family coming to town and starting the Christmas shopping – I just want to give you a reminder to stop and be thankful.
In Luke 17, we see the story of how Jesus encountered 10 lepers – who saw Jesus and believed He could heal them. So the lepers cried out from a distance, “Jesus, master, have mercy on us!” Jesus told them to go and present themselves to the priests – and as they did, they were cleansed. You can only imagine how excited they must have been to be cured of this awful disease! But in their excitement, they completely forgot to take the time to thank the one who healed them. All except for one. A Samaritan. The Bible says when he realized he had been healed, he immediately turned around, praising God in a loud voice, and fell on his face at Jesus’ feet – giving Him thanks.
So often today, we end up like the other 9 lepers who experienced the grace and mercy of Jesus – and then just went on about life, forgetting the one the blessing came from. As we celebrate Thanksgiving, let us follow the example of the Samaritan man who saw the miraculous work Jesus had done in his life, and immediately turned around and said, thank you. Whether it’s a miraculous healing like that leper experienced, or any one of the multitude of blessings that God pours out on us every day…let us remember Paul’s words in 1 Thessalonians 5:18 – “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”