At this Thanksgiving Season what better time to remember all of the things we have to be thankful for.  The Psalmist David said in Psalm 138: 1 (LB) “Lord, with all my heart I thank you.  I will sing your praises before the armies of angels.”  Some people never say, “thank you”.

 

In Luke 17: 11-17, Jesus healed ten lepers but only one came back to thank him.  In Luke 17: 15 one of them came back to Jesus shouting, “Glory to God, I’m healed!”  He fell flat on the ground in front of Jesus, face downward in the dust, thanking him for what he had done.  This man was a despised Samaritan.   Jesus asked, “Didn’t I heal ten men?  Where are the nine?”  They were Jews and Jesus himself was Jew.

 

For a period of time, I worked as an orderly in a hospital.  One night, a nurse called me to help her change a gentleman’s bed.  All the time we were working, changing his bed, he never said a word.  When we were leaving in the middle of the night, in a dark room, came the words “thank you”.

 

Another time, while still working at the hospital, I got a call at night, to do a nursing procedure on a young man who was a patient and only 19 years old.  Riding a motorcycle, he was thrown off and it left him paralyzed from the neck down, a

paraplegic, unable to do anything for himself.  After completing the nursing procedure, I asked him if there was anything I could do before I left and he said, “yes”.  Thinking it might be something he wanted to eat or drink, he surprised me by saying, “would you scratch my nose?”  He was lying in bed with an itchy nose and unable to move any part of his body.

 

One day I saw an elderly lady walking with a cane from her car in the parking lot to the store.  I held the door open for her and she said, “thank you”.  I appreciated those words.

 

Friend, the words “thank you” are only two words in our vocabulary.  Learn to use them.