Saying Thank You isn’t so difficult (although even that can be a practice we neglect).
Valuing the spiritual practice of gratitude is all but impossible for us. Because gratitude can’t really fuel our life of faith in Jesus, can it? And yet that is exactly what the Apostle Paul seems to suggest in his final instructions to a group of people long, long ago. Paul says,
Give thanks in every situation because this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus (1 Thessalonians 5:18, CEB).
In a list of instructions, this is the one that Paul says is God’s will in Christ Jesus. There’s something about gratitude. Gratitude fuels faith. Gratitude draws us closer to the reality of who Jesus is and what Jesus has done for us. Gratitude propels us into a generous life of action.
The Samaritan leper in Luke 17 demonstrates the precious value of practicing gratitude. Listen more to Sunday’s message from October 16, 2016 for more:
Image: Christ and the Lepers, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56011 [retrieved October 18, 2016]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CodexAureus_Cleansing_of_the_ten_lepers.jpg.
