“And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God,” Luke 17:15

“Lord, I just want to thank You!”  It’s more than an exclamation of gratefulness.  It is the life song that every Christian should continually sing.  The voice of our praise should rise to heaven in utter adoration for all that the Lord has done in our lives.

Leprosy, during the Bible era, was one of the most detrimental diseases a person could have.  It not only riddled the body with sores and pain, but socially speaking, it marked an individual as being unclean.  They had to be separated from everyone else for fear of spreading the disease and making other persons unclean, also.

To be healed of this disease is life-renewing.  It gives one a chance to come out of isolation and be restored to fellowship with others again.  It restores them to the state of being considered clean, of being good enough to rejoin the community and have close conversations, once more.

The former lepers know what life was like to meet people and to have to call out to everyone what was wrong in their lives.  But now that healing has taken place, they are not sentenced to that stigma and forced to live alone.  Rather, they can enjoy the hug of a child or a kiss from a spouse, which can be experienced again.

They are no longer an outcast.

They are no longer viewed by the blemishes that marked their skin.

Jesus released them.  Jesus did the impossible for them.  This goes beyond healing – it is total restoration.  Everything that was once lost can now be regained, thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ.  Fortunately for us, there is a greater disease than leprosy that the Lord can deliver us from: the disease of sin.

Sin has ravaged humanity since the Fall in the Garden of Eden.  It has marred us from the inside out.  It has marked mankind as being unclean and has sentenced him to a life of isolation.  It has prevented him from fellowshiping with God as he was originally designed to do.  It is the one disease in which every single human on the face of this earth needs to be healed from.  NO EXCEPTIONS!  “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Isn’t it wonderful to know that just as Jesus did not leave the ten lepers in their destitute condition, He did not leave us in that pitiful state either.  When one turns to Him, He stands at the ready to intercede and to save.  To be saved means to be delivered, and I, for one, am glad to be delivered!

When I look back on my own life and see the dreadful state I was once in, I rejoice in the Lord for cleansing me.  I thank God for healing the sin-diseased soul I once had and for letting me experience a brand new life in Him.

In the muddling of our daily lives, concerns for this and that tend to overshadow the thankfulness we should be expressing.  But, “Lord, I thank You!”  As the one leper, I come back and “glorify God!”  His deliverance has not only given me a new lease on life here on this earth, but I have gained something far more precious in the world to come.

I know my former state: “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” (Isaiah 64:6).  It isolated us!  “But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we are all the work of thy hand” (Isaiah 64:8).  We have been restored!  We have been remade!  And, I am THANKFUL!

Now, I have a future to rejoice in: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him,” (1 Corinthians 2:9).  I’m talking about eternity, y’all!  And, I am THANKFUL!  I know where I was.  I know where He’s taking me.  That’s enough for me to declare, “Today, I want to be THANKFUL!”

Text-Free Photo by:  Guillaume de Germain