Praise the Lord for this
wonderful Wednesday. It will be a glorious day. We will gather for our
Wednesday Evening gathering for fellowship and study at 6 PM. We are currently
studying the Book of Joel. Praise the Lord for His promise, While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat,
and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.Genesis 8
It is a glorious season here in America. We get to celebrate the season of Harvest and Thanksgiving, paving the way for Advent and Christmas. Praise the Lord that we get to end the year with great celebration and jubilation.
We are planning for our community wide Thanksgiving banquet
this coming Saturday. We will have two seatings, at 5 and at 6 PM. We will be
showing a full length movie "Faith Like Potatoes' in the sanctuary. Our Church
Fellowship Hall will be transformed in to a banquet hall once again. Chef Lou
Pasquale and the team are preparing this banquet with so much love. Praise the
Lord for the way He provides for His ministry indeed. Praise the Lord for so
many of our people who are excited in participating in this event. There are
several who will be preparing the turkeys. Two women are going above and beyond
the call of duty. One is preparing two turkeys and baking 7 pies. The other
is preparing three turkeys and baking 10 pies. They are the Marthas of the
church. We praise the Lord for His faithfulness and for His generosity.
As we enter the Thanksgiving
season I am pondering on the Ten lepers who were healed by the Lord as we read
about it in Luke 17. Bill Griffin tells the story of the leper in Mark
1:40 this way: "'Hello, I'm a leper!' A man popped out from behind
a building and stood right in front of Jesus. 'Please don't run away,
Jesus!'
"'What's the matter with
your skin?' asked Jesus.
"'Can't You see I'm covered
with runny sores and crusty scabs?' No one wants to look at me, my face is so
horrible.'
"'What do you want Me to
do?'
"'You can make me better.
I know You can,' said the man, falling on his knees in front of Jesus. 'If You
don't, I'll scratch myself to death.'
"Jesus felt sorry for the
poor man.
"'Don't touch me,' said the
man. 'That's how you get it.'
"'I'm not afraid to touch
you.' Jesus reached down and took hold of the man's arms and pulled him to his
feet. The itching was gone. The sores started to dry. The scabs began to fall
off.
"'Thank You, thank You,
thank You!' shouted the man. 'What can I do to thank You?'
"'You can go to the temple,
show yourself to a priest and say a prayer of thanks to God.'
"'Yes, yes; I will, I
will!' promised the man hurrying off.
"'One more thing,' said
Jesus.
"'Anything, anything,' said
the man.
"'You don't have to tell
anyone what I just did.'
"'I won't tell a soul,'
said the man as he skipped toward Jerusalem; but the man was so happy and the
walk to the temple was so long that he forgot and told everyone he met. Then
all the other lepers along the road began to look for the wonderful Man with the
healing touch." (Calvin Miller, The Family Book of Jesus, Bethany
House, 2002.)
The story well told of the
gratitude of good lepers. Good lepers are those who are healed and never forget
the disease they once had. They remember how good clean feels. Bad lepers, on
the other hand, are those who are healed and go on acting as if they never had
the disease.
Ninety percent of all the lepers
in Luke
17 are ingrates — bad lepers pretending
they never met Jesus. What a shame! They were so completely healed that there
was not a smidgen of their former state of decay left to them. They were so
healed, they headed back to the social centers of their communities.
However, for all the joy of their
cleansing, we never would have known about them at all, except for the 10
percent of their group who knew the art of gratitude. One of the 10: "when he
saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at
Jesus' feet and thanked Him—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked a most
perplexing question: 'Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was
no one found to give praise to God except this foreigner?'" (Luke 17:15-18).
"Thou hast
given so much to me. Give me one thing
more—a grateful heart. by
George Herbert (1593-1633) ...
In
Christ,
Brown
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