Taking the Time

“Praise God I am healed!” Luke 17:15

Jesus healed many, many people in various kinds of ways. Here in Luke 17, he met 10 lepers who asked Him to have pity on them. He instructed them to go and show themselves to the priests. They obeyed, and on the way, all 10 were healed. Only one of the lepers went back to look for Jesus to thank Him and give praise to God in a loud voice. 

Jesus asked, “Were not all ten made whole? Where are the other nine?” Then he turned to the Samaritan man who was healed and declared, “Your faith has been your salvation.”

There are countless things to thank God for. A few years ago, I decided to number my thanks to God in my journal. This was after I read Ann Voskamp’s best seller, “A Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are”. I am now in #6318. 

In her book, Ann writes, “Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing.... Through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away.” 

It seems the nine lepers were in a hurry. Perhaps now that they were healed and whole, there were a hundred and one things they wanted to do. They wanted to see their families for sure. Being lepers, they were pariah, and they were supposed to stay away from people. Whatever it is, they did not take the time to go back and thank Jesus. Because they did not take the time to be grateful, they missed a most precious gift that only Jesus could bestow: salvation. 

In the midst of all my rushing, I need to take the time to slow down and thank God. My Father has all the time in the world for me. Silly, absurd, crazy me. He has time for me and my challenges, my rants, my idiosyncrasies. I should stop, savor His presence and love, and thank Him.