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Thankfulness – Part 2
When I was growing up, I remember adults talking about being thankful often. If I didn’t want my dinner, my parents would say that there were kids all over the world who would gladly eat what I didn’t want, and that I should be thankful that I didn’t have to go to bed hungry every night.
I wonder if we are as thankful today as we were then. And I wonder if parents today are teaching their children to be thankful for what they have like our parents taught us when we were kids. Sometimes I think maybe they’re not.
In the parable of the Ten Lepers, Luke is telling us is that thankfulness is and always has been the exception and not the rule. If we can take the example of the ten lepers to represent the whole human race, then it seems only about ten percent of us are thankful. Ten lepers were cleansed, but only one came back to thank Jesus for healing him.
Think of what it’s like for us when we’ve done something for someone else or given someone something and we get no thanks in return. Parenthood is often a thankless job, but especially motherhood. Think of all the things mothers do for their children and for the whole family. And all too often it’s a thankless job. Children are all too often unthankful to their parents. Children are so dependent upon their parents for everything. When they’re first born, children couldn’t live at all without their mothers taking care of them nearly every minute. And then come the long years of growing up when the kids are dependent upon their parents for literally everything. And what happens years later when the children are grown up and the parents are old and infirm? The parents are now a nuisance and their adult children put them in senior care center. Happens all the time.
Jesus gladly gave the ten lepers what they asked of him. He wanted to bring joy and healing into their lives and He did. And then nine out of ten went on their way and quickly forgot Him.
God is used to that. How often have all of us prayed intensely to God when we were desperate or afraid or in trouble. And then time passes and we forget God.
Thankfulness is one of the essential parts of the Christian life. There can be no such thing as an unthankful Christian. A spirit or attitude of thankfulness characterizes the soul of the Christian. Amen.
Blessings In Jesus,
Fr. David