Do you remember to say thank you?
14 November 2018
It’s easy to understand Jesus’ incredulity in today’s Gospel. You would think that most people who had been healed from something as big as leprosy would naturally think to thank the person who healed them.
St Paul points out in the first reading that all of us have been rescued from a life of “foolishness, disobedience and disillusion” to be justified by God’s grace and “heirs in the hope of eternal life”. Here is a bigger reason again to be grateful. Are we? I am, but I wonder sometimes how conscious I am of just how big a gift this is and if my gratitude would increase if I was…
More than that, though, I know that there are so many more gifts that God gives me every day that are nothing in proportion to the gift of salvation, but simply an expression of His everyday love for me. In her book, One Thousand Gifts, author Ann Voskamp tells the story of answering a dare to write a list of one thousand gifts that God had given her. What she noticed was that often God’s gifts in her life were:
… just the common things and maybe I don’t even know they are gifts really until I write them down and that is really what they look like. Gifts He bestows. This writing it down – it is sort of like…unwrapping love.
Lord, thank you for the many, many ways that you express your love in my life. Please help me to notice these more often, and remember to thank you.