The Gift of a Thankful Heart
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Rev Andrew J. Demostes
Almost
thirty years ago, I happened to attend a banquet to which then Mayor
Nicholas Mavroules of Peabody had also been invited. Since it was an
election year, the Mayor used the opportunity to visit from table to
table, shaking hands and soliciting votes. He stopped at a table, not
far from where I was standing, at which a family was sitting, each
member of which I knew the Mayor had helped in one way or another. When
he told the father he would appreciate his vote and support in the
coming election, he was promptly told “We’ll be voting for your
opponent this time around.” “Well”, said the Mayor, “I appreciate your
honesty, but may I ask why you won’t vote for me?” “Because”, the
father replied, “you ain’t done nothing for us lately.”
That
episode never left me, and has often reminded me of the scriptural
story of the cure of the ten lepers. After they had been made well,
only one returned to offer thanks, leading Christ to justifiably ask
“Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the other nine?” (Luke
17:17). The nine lepers of scripture were even more ungrateful than the
man at the banquet. They had just been cleansed from their new found
health and freedom and were never seen or heard from again. Only one
leper returned to Jesus to express his gratitude and devotion.
How
could the nine have been so unappreciative? How could the man have been
so ungrateful to the Mayor who had helped him so many times? To find
the answer, all we need to do is look into our own hearts. When we do,
we see how quickly we, too, forget that everything we are had have
comes from God. We must continually nurture the grace of gratitude in
our hearts, and be eternally vigilant lest a sense of entitlement makes
us into one of the lepers rather than the one who returned to express
thanksgiving. We must never forget that while God chooses to give us
everything, he owes us nothing.
- Rev. Andrew Demotses
