The holiday season is upon us. Turn on the television, radio, computer or tablet and almost every other commercial is directed toward spending.  The pressure is being applied to spend. The endless advertising programs you to make your year-end consumption of products to attempt to soothe the internal struggles that come along with our humanity.  Therefore, the programming begins with Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday and strangely enough we throw on the tail end Giving Tuesday!  In other words, shop big, shop small, shop online and then give to some organization(s) to help make life better.  What a way to program people to get caught up on stuff rather than being grateful and giving.  This kinda of programming works against developing a spirit of thankfulness among us as a people.

 

However, in our text, we find that there is a great lesson we can learn about possessing a spirit of thankfulness that extends far beyond Thanksgiving Day.  The one leper in this group of ten men plagued by this dreadful disease shows us how to develop a spirit of thankfulness.  The partnership we can have with God, coupled with our willingness to apply the principles and acknowledge the power of God each help us remember how thankful we should live while on our journey.  Sometimes we can become like the nine lepers who went on about their business and got off course.  However, the one leper shows us the beauty of living life with a spirit of thankfulness.