Are You the One Out of Ten?

Funny how it took me awhile to settle on a topic for this week.  My goal was to crank something out before Thanksgiving so I could relax and enjoy the holiday, and my mind was drawing a blank.  It occurred to me that my intent for Thanksgiving was to focus on enjoying my time with my family and delicious food, and I was not leaving a whole lot of room for contemplation of all I have for which to be thankful.  I decided despite it's cliche-ness, we can all use a reminder to be thankful.

On his way to Samaria, Jesus was approached by ten lepers outside of a village (most likely they were not allowed in the village due to the contagious nature of the disease).  They called out to Jesus to heal them and He told them to show themselves to the priests which was the necessary step for a cured leper to take in order to be allowed back into the community.  Luke 17:14 tells us, "And as they went, they were cleansed."  One of the ten lepers, upon seeing that He was healed, came back praising God loudly and fell at Jesus's feet, thanking Him.  "Jesus asked, 'Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?  Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?'" The leper was a Samaritan, a nation considered to be idolaters.  Then Jesus tells the man that it is his faith that has made him well.

So what about these other nine?  The interesting thing about the way this story plays out is that Jesus instructs the men to go show themselves to the priest before they show any signs of healing, and they start walking.  It is clear that they were all exercising faith at this point and it was this faith that brought their healing for it was "as they went" that they were healed.  We know they were all healed because Jesus said, "Were not all ten cleansed?"  The question is why did only one come back to thank Jesus?  Perhaps they worried if they came back to thank him they would not have completed their directions to show themselves to the priest and could risk a relapse of illness.  Maybe they were just caught up in the moment and forgot.  We could speculate that they were still uncertain that they were fully healed and they were waiting on confirmation from the priest to join in thanksgiving.

I think all of these theories could be very likely, but I wonder about another that is rooted only in my own pattern of ungratefulness.  I wonder if these men in some way felt entitled to the healing they received.  Maybe it's just my cultured-American attitude reading into it, but I think about all of those times I have forgotten to thank God for my blessings as a result of my feelings of entitlement.  I feel entitled to my home, my children, my husband, my food, my church, my internet access, my car, my relaxation, my health.  I have worked hard for them- are they not deserved?  And if I were to be in a position where I risked losing one of them, would I not pray to God and flaunt my hard work and faithfulness as a reason for Him to give back what I rightly deserve?

Now those feelings of gratefulness are flooding my emotions.  There are many who, by my standards of hard work and faithfulness, deserve what I have and press on without it- the family relocating to an apartment due to job loss, the woman desiring children staring at a negative test again, a wife finding herself alone after tragedy, the man who knows nothing of a hot meal, the nations that can not worship freely a God who offers them the only comfort they may ever know, the single mother riding the bus to the library so she can look for jobs, the caregiver of an elderly parent with dementia, the child dying of cancer.  We are not entitled to any of it.  Our hard work and faithfulness is not a guarantee for "the good things in life."

What is a guarantee is that our Savior Jesus Christ will carry us through any time of trouble in this life, on to our heavenly home.  He has promised to be our source of strength and comfort when every other thing and person fails us.  That is the guarantee of our faith.  Everything else is a blessing, a little extra bit of grace that we are to be using to bless the hearts and lives of others.  It is what we do with these blessings that shows how grateful we are for them.  So when we gather around the Thanksgiving table this weekend and remind ourselves of what we have to be thankful for, let's not forget to be the reason that someone else is thankful.