I have to admit I was a bit hesitant when I saw her waiting to talk to me. I had already had three people come and ask for help with things this morning & I had to say no to two of them. So to see her standing there, I wanted to hide instead of having to say no again. I have known her for a while and she is always asking for something, a ride for herself or someone, a job, school fees help, food for someone. They are all legitimate things to ask for, but we can only help with so much.
So I continued what I was doing inside and waited until she asked to talk to me. As I approached her & we talked a bit about Christmas, I was trying to think through my mind what else she could be asking for this time. I was doing mental calculations to remember how much we have already spent out of our benevolence money this month to know if we would be able to help in any way. And then she said it.
“Thank you.”
She said she had just come to say thank you for the ways our ministry helped her family last month with a medical need. It wasn’t even her medical need, it was her cousin’s. Yet, here she was, making a special trip to come over and say thank you. We don’t do what we do to hear a thank you, but it happens so rarely that it surprises me every time. I remember the letter we got from a community thanking us for helping transport a person’s body to the mortuary. I remember a husband talking to me at a carepoint, thanking us for getting his wife to the hospital for a blood transfusion. And it made me wonder how Jesus did it, day in & day out.
“On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:11-19)
My experience with the woman who had come to say thank you made me ask myself two questions. 1. Does Jesus ever feel like I do, knowing that most people are coming to him asking for help instead of coming to say thank you? 2. Do I come to Jesus more like the one leper, thanking and praising God? Or more like the other nine, asking God for things and then going on my way?
1. Does Jesus ever feel like I do, knowing that most people are coming to him asking for help instead of coming to say thank you?
We know that Jesus looked at people with compassion, saw them as sheep without a shepherd, and knew that he had come to heal and serve them. He came for the sick, not the healthy, so it didn’t surprise him at all to have people ask him to heal them or help them. But I wonder if the disciples ever got sick of it? Thinking “oh, no, not this guy again. He just came last week to ask for help for his mom, and now he is coming to ask for something again?” I wonder if the disciples saw the one leper coming back to Jesus healed, and wondered if he was going to ask Jesus to do something else. I have so much to learn about seeing people with compassion and loving each individual. And I praise God that people have faith enough and trust enough to come and ask. They know that there are resources and that God has provided a ministry through us to help them in the ways that we can.
2. Do I come to Jesus more like the one leper, thanking and praising God or more like the other nine, asking God for things and then going on my way?
I have to confess, I have learned so much from my friends here in Nsoko about thanking God in prayer. Part of it is being in an impoverished area, realizing that shelter, food, family, health, school, employment, and life itself are all blessings from the Lord. But part of it is just hearing them thank God continually. I often have found that my prayers are more intercessory in nature, if not asking specific things for myself, then asking them for the people around me & in my life, lifting them up to the Lord. Which God does desire for us to do in prayer - and he tells us to approach His throne of grace with confidence as we pray. But far too often, when my prayer time is cut short, it’s the prayers of thanksgiving - for myself and others - that get left out. And I am convicted to say that far too often, I am standing in the group of the nine, not the one who comes back to say thank you & praise Jesus.
Lord, help me to be more like you - to see people as you do and to have compassion on them as they stand and live in the midst of so much need. And Lord, help me to be more like the leper - quick to praise and thank you as I see you at work in so many areas in and around me!
