The Elasticity of Gratitude

"As Jesus was entering a village, ten lepers met Him. They stood at a distance from Him and raised their voices, saying,  'Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!' And when He saw them, He said, 'Go show yourselves to the priests.' As they were going, they were cleansed. And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice. . . He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in reply, 'Ten were cleaned, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?'  Then He said to him, ' Stand up and go. Your Faith has saved you.' " --[Luke 17: 11-19].


During Biblical times, leprosy was highly contagious and had devastating outcomes. If a person became infected with leprosy, he had to isolate himself, and he could not return until he proved to the priest that he was clean.

But this story is about so much more than the miraculous healing delivered by Jesus. This parable is also about Gratitude.

 It is telling in this story that the outsider, the Samaritan, is the one who recognizes the true miracle of this moment, and who returns to thank Jesus.

I had a poignant conversation with my son a few months ago. I was asking him to sort through his old school books. Literally, when school started up again, there would be no room on his bookshelf for his new textbooks.

As he stacked up the great riches of books, he asked me about the Mission that I am involved in to help a village in South Sudan. He said, "Do the children in the village have books?" I said, "Well. No."

He asked, "Do they have a school?" I said, "They do, but it is not big enough. Some students have to learn outside, under a tree; and when it rains, they cannot go to school."

On and on our conversation went --"Do they have pencils?" I said, "No. Not until the Mission sent pencils. And when the children heard that there were pencils, they ran from all directions, and lined up."  My son said,  "For a PENCIL?"  I told him, softly, " Next Mission, we are sending pens."

We talked further. I said, "No desks, they sit on the ground. No library. No calculators. No school nurse or doctor. No pharmacy to go get aspirin, if you have a headache. No bandages, if you get a cut. No clean water, until the Mission donated a well a couple of years ago. Not enough food; if there is a food shortage, the men who work the fields eat first; women and children and elderly may go hungry. No electricity. They have a generator, but no gasoline. No cars, they walk everywhere. No asphalt roads, just dirt roads in the village. No jobs or stores."

I concluded, "And, you don't want to do your Math homework. Do you know how blessed you are?"

My son was shocked.

He finished stacking the books. Then, he said, "I want you to give these books to someone who does not have any books."

This son of mine was a kid who used to break a pencil in frustration and slam it on the floor. Then, he would tell me, "I want another pencil." He would lose his school books, his fall jacket, his boots, his mittens.

He would argue over doing Math homework. He would grumble over reading and homework.

After our talk, my son does his homework with little to no complaint. He doesn't snap his pencils. He is even helping me to create flyers for our Mission, and to take photos for the Mission Facebook page.

I am working on correcting my own lapses of Gratitude. . . like the time only recently when I was very irritated that the sweater I was trying to order was out of stock. Then I scolded myself -- I have so many sweaters, how can I DARE complain?

It took "Outsiders"-- the villagers with their lives in this tiny African village--  to totally change my perspective.

Gratitude is elastic. The more I have, the more I covet what I really don't need. The more I have, the more I take for granted. But in this little village in South Sudan, the children are overjoyed to be given a simple pencil.

Anytime I am dissatisfied, or pity myself just a little bit, God shows me a person who has SO much less than I do. THEN, He goes further, and asks me to help them!

We can learn so much from our humble brothers and sisters, who are grateful for the brilliant stars, when we long for expensive diamonds; who eagerly eat a piece of bread, when our food markets throw food away daily; who have no books, when we put books by the side of the road, hoping a passerby would take them.

We can learn so much!

[Related Posting:  "Gratitude", November 16, 2011.]

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